Prime HD, Hydra 26HD, and Hydra 52HD Upgrade Pucks by Luxdium!

[JNalley]

Hey everyone, just thought I'd share that these are now available for pre-order. I know a bunch of people participated in the beta so I am curious about those people's experiences, as well as just discussing thoughts on the product.

What are they?
Upgraded pucks with different spectral outputs for the last generation of AI Lights.

According to the videos and literature available, they run cooler, brighter, and come in 3 different flavors/spectral outputs.

Also, since they're replacing the red and green channels with other colored diodes, they have made things easy by creating several schedules featuring different intensity types and spectral outputs for each type of puck!

It was a 2-year beta, so there are also plenty of pictures of growth and coral coloration under each puck type.

I'm planning on picking them up in late August. Anyone else interested in them? Have any thoughts?

Read more info here: https://www.luxdium.com/collections/all

See user tanks+corals here: https://www.luxdium.com/pages/colored-by-lux

 

[Karen00]

I haven't heard anything about this. Thanks for posting! I'm definitely going to check these out. If the green and blue diodes have been replaced does this mean the myAI app has been updated to reflect this change or do you still use those in the app to adjust the new diodes?

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

I am going to try a set next week. I have two 26HD that I got for cheap that the blues are dying on one of them. I also talked to him about the dif between non-HD and HD and they are electrically compatible. I am going to confirm but I have a really nice 52 and 26 that I would like to upgrade the pucks on.

 

[JNalley]

I haven't heard anything about this. Thanks for posting! I'm definitely going to check these out. If the green and blue diodes have been replaced does this mean the myAI app has been updated to reflect this change or do you still use those in the app to adjust the new diodes?

The app doesn't read the diode colors, so pretty sure they still say R and G and you're actually adjusting the new diode colors. He/They definitely do not have access to update the app in any way.

I am going to try a set next week. I have two 26HD that I got for cheap that the blues are dying on one of them. I also talked to him about the dif between non-HD and HD and they are electrically compatible. I am going to confirm but I have a really nice 52 and 26 that I would like to upgrade the pucks on.

As far as I am aware the HD function is specifically a function of the driver, which allows the unused power to be diverted to other diodes up to a certain percentage, so just thinking about how that functions means it *should* be compatible, but that's just me working it out in my head, I could be completely wrong, lol.

 

[shakacuz]

unfortunately for me i have 2 hydra32hd’s.. may be a while before i can try these out!

 

[JNalley]

unfortunately for me i have 2 hydra32hd’s.. may be a while before i can try these out!

I hope that's where he's going with them next, but who knows... You can join his/their facebook page "Luxdium" the owner/creator is pretty active on there

 

[luxdium]

The app doesn't read the diode colors, so pretty sure they still say R and G and you're actually adjusting the new diode colors. He/They definitely do not have access to update the app in any way.


As far as I am aware the HD function is specifically a function of the driver, which allows the unused power to be diverted to other diodes up to a certain percentage, so just thinking about how that functions means it *should* be compatible, but that's just me working it out in my head, I could be completely wrong, lol.

HD or Hyperdrive is a combination of hardware and software. More so, it depends on the software. Internally, the lights have maximum programmed intensity values and the software allows you "reallocate" power to the colors. It's more of an advanced color balancing feature. One thing the HD lights have over Non-HDs is high-frequency dimming. This is excellent because you won't see banding or flicker when you take pictures or videos of your tank. This flicker is most visible when the non-HDs are dimmed. It also makes it difficult to guarantee a consistent spectrometer-verified spectrum as the discrete LED colors are oscillating between on and off states. For this reason, we recommend installing our clusters in HD-enabled lights. But that's not to say they won't work. There are minimal electrical differences between the HD and Non-HD clusters. A few of our more adventurous beta testers installed them in their non-HDs without much trouble and even shared comparisons between their HD and Non-HD lights.

It took a surprising investment to develop these because we wanted to optimize them in every dimension possible within the limits of AI's platform. We even reverse-engineered myAI, the firmware in the lights, and experimented with many layouts to achieve the performance goals we sought. One such experiment was with injecting code into the myAI runtime to add new sliders and flashing special firmware to the lights to enable them to report the new colors and the name of the type of installed cluster. But with other integrations like AI Cloud, and IoTA (Neptune Systems' wireless control platform), our changes wouldn't play well with those as they would also need to be updated. Since there are understandable risks associated with flashing custom firmware, we forwent that direction. With our clusters, your lights' red and green sliders will control two new colors: Indigo and Cyan (in the case of our Cyan flavors). For the HD-enabled lights, we'll also provide spectrometer-verified presets to help you maximize their spectral performance and take them well beyond the flagships. The best part is, that installation is about as simple as changing a lightbulb.

Support for the 32HD is in the works, but there are some fundamental challenges associated with their thermal and optical systems. Add to that the semiconductor shortages, and it makes it very challenging to bring new innovations. Many established light manufacturers are actually releasing new product generations to combat the shortage by swapping parts for more readily available ones. This has profound impacts on performance, not to mention introducing inconsistencies. We'd rather release a quality upgrade for those lights than be the first to push something.

We'll make an official announcement post soon, and will go in-depth on the various color variants, but until then, our website, www.luxdium.com should cover the bases.

Thanks, and it's a great honor to finally offer such a product!

 

[JNalley]

HD or Hyperdrive is a combination of hardware and software. More so, it depends on the software.
Internally, the lights have maximum programmed intensity values and the software allows you "reallocate" power to the colors. It's more of an advanced color balancing feature.

I understand that software controls it, but wouldn't both the driver and the firmware need to allow it, which makes it a function of hardware rather than a function of software? I'm genuinely curious not trying to say you're wrong. In my brain, that's how I see it functioning, but I could be way off...

One thing the HD lights have over Non-HDs is high-frequency dimming. This is excellent because you won't see banding or flicker when you take pictures or videos of your tank. This flicker is most visible when the non-HDs are dimmed. It also makes it difficult to guarantee a consistent spectrometer-verified spectrum as the discrete LED colors are oscillating between on and off states. For this reason, we recommend installing our clusters in HD-enabled lights. But that's not to say they won't work. There are minimal electrical differences between the HD and Non-HD clusters. A few of our more adventurous beta testers installed them in their non-HDs without much trouble and even shared comparisons between their HD and Non-HD lights.

I see, that's good to know.

We even reverse-engineered myAI, the firmware in the lights, and experimented with many layouts to achieve the performance goals we sought. One such experiment was with injecting code into the myAI runtime to add new sliders and flashing special firmware to the lights to enable them to report the new colors and the name of the type of installed cluster. But with other integrations like AI Cloud, and IoTA (Neptune Systems' wireless control platform), our changes wouldn't play well with those as they would also need to be updated. Since there are understandable risks associated with flashing custom firmware, we forwent that direction.

That's unfortunate but definitely understandable... Great info too

With our clusters, your lights' red and green sliders will control two new colors: Indigo and Cyan (in the case of our Cyan flavors).

What about the Gold and Blue? Are they additional Blue LEDs?

Support for the 32HD is in the works, but there are some fundamental challenges associated with their thermal and optical systems. Add to that the semiconductor shortages, and it makes it very challenging to bring new innovations. Many established light manufacturers are actually releasing new product generations to combat the shortage by swapping parts for more readily available ones. This has profound impacts on performance, not to mention introducing inconsistencies. We'd rather release a quality upgrade for those lights than be the first to push something.

We'll make an official announcement post soon, and will go in-depth on the various color variants, but until then, our website, www.luxdium.com should cover the bases.

Thanks, and it's a great honor to finally offer such a product!

I'm just glad you guys did it :-D It feels like I am going to be breathing new life into my Hydra 26HD's... Akin to breathing new life into a twin turbo RX-7 I picked up at the junk yard :-D

 

[luxdium]

I understand that software controls it, but wouldn't both the driver and the firmware need to allow it, which makes it a function of hardware rather than a function of software? I'm genuinely curious not trying to say you're wrong. In my brain, that's how I see it functioning, but I could be way off...

Apart from a higher frequency, there's not much in the way of enabling Hyperdrive in the non-HD models. Take the Prime Non-HD. Minus the driver chips, it has all the same components as its HD successor. If you look at the datasheets of the driver chips and the circuit layout, the major difference that stands out is their switching frequency (1MHz in the non-HDs vs up to 2MHz in the HDs). Given the reallocation feature of Hyperdrive, you could set a maximum value for each channel (which corresponds to above 100%), and never let the sliders normally reach that intensity unless the estimated wattage draw is within the programmed limits. In the event that the combination of all other sliders exceeds the total power limit, dynamically lower the maximum user-controllable power levels of the other channels until they reach "100%" while preserving the intensity of the "hyperdriven" slider. In the event that everything exceeds the programmed total power limit, set the intensity of every channel to 100%. While hardware can make implementing this easier, most of this happens in software.

That's unfortunate but definitely understandable... Great info too

Yeah, I'm not sure how comfortable people would be hooking up their lights' WiFi cards to a dongle and connecting them to a command-line interface. It sure was cool being able to reprogram the serial numbers and light models. Who needs an Arduino, when you can have an AIduino aka "PrimeDuino?"

What about the Gold and Blue? Are they additional Blue LEDs?

The difference between Gold and Blue is mainly the white balance. Blue has more royal flanking those whites to make the white color cooler whereas Gold is warmer. This is more for personal preference, as some like running lights more on the actinic/royal blue side, whereas some prefer a more natural, full-spectrum look, which is what Gold delivers. If you want more color flexibility towards white, Gold is probably your safest bet. But Gold can also be tuned to more actinic blends if desired. However, if you want to put more power to the royal blues, and prefer a cooler white (more than 20000K), then Blue is your best bet.

 

[JNalley]

Apart from a higher frequency, there's not much in the way of enabling Hyperdrive in the non-HD models. Take the Prime Non-HD. Minus the driver chips, it has all the same components as its HD successor. If you look at the datasheets of the driver chips and the circuit layout, the major difference that stands out is their switching frequency (1MHz in the non-HDs vs up to 2MHz in the HDs). Given the reallocation feature of Hyperdrive, you could set a maximum value for each channel (which corresponds to above 100%), and never let the sliders normally reach that intensity unless the estimated wattage draw is within the programmed limits. In the event that the combination of all other sliders exceeds the total power limit, dynamically lower the maximum user-controllable power levels of the other channels until they reach "100%" while preserving the intensity of the "hyperdriven" slider. In the event that everything exceeds the programmed total power limit, set the intensity of every channel to 100%. While hardware can make implementing this easier, most of this happens in software.

This is my second convo with you (the first was on Facebook in some back-and-forth comments) and I feel like I learned something new in both interactions. Thanks for being willing to share your knowledge.

Yeah, I'm not sure how comfortable people would be hooking up their lights' WiFi cards to a dongle and connecting them to a command-line interface. It sure was cool being able to reprogram the serial numbers and light models. Who needs an Arduino, when you can have an AIduino aka "PrimeDuino?"

haha, I'd be down for it, but I'm likely in the 0.01% of people that likes to tinker with such things.

The difference between Gold and Blue is mainly the white balance. Blue has more royal flanking those whites to make the white color cooler whereas Gold is warmer. This is more for personal preference, as some like running lights more on the actinic/royal blue side, whereas some prefer a more natural, full-spectrum look, which is what Gold delivers. If you want more color flexibility towards white, Gold is probably your safest bet. But Gold can also be tuned to more actinic blends if desired. However, if you want to put more power to the royal blues, and prefer a cooler white (more than 20000K), then Blue is your best bet.

Funny you mention 20,000K as that's kind of my sweet spot... I really wish I could see them in person over the same tank... lol

 

[TangerineSpeedo]

@luxdium Now if you were to make a chip that would replace the WiFi chip in the non-HD models Plus your new pucks and come up with a controllable app. I mean ppl are paying almost $200 bucks on ebay for the old controllers.
OMG!
There is too much waste in this industry. I understand that that AI wants to keep selling units, But I don't want to throw away a light just because there is some new technology out there. Especially since AI lights are so modular, They can be upgraded easily. This is very exciting, but I think you are going to make me go broke! I have two 24HD, one 24 and one 52 non-HD

 

[JNalley]

@luxdium Now if you were to make a chip that would replace the WiFi chip in the non-HD models Plus your new pucks and come up with a controllable app. I mean ppl are paying almost $200 bucks on ebay for the old controllers.
OMG!
There is too much waste in this industry. I understand that that AI wants to keep selling units, But I don't want to throw away a light just because there is some new technology out there. Especially since AI lights are so modular, They can be upgraded easily. This is very exciting, but I think you are going to make me go broke! I have two 24HD, one 24 and one 52 non-HD

I could be wrong, but AI has always maintained that they will be enabling Wifi on the new lights at some point, so I believe they're using a combo bluetooth/wifi controller in the unit and simply need to enable it in firmware. The reason that hasn't happened yet, I suspect, is because after EcoTech bought them out (after previous Gen of lights already on market, but before current-gen actually hit the market) they didn't want the fact that AI has Wifi and EcoTech doesn't to pull market share away. Both companies are stating at the moment that "They will be enabling wifi in the near future" and I suspect it's EcoTech that is holding that up...

 

[Karen00]

HD or Hyperdrive is a combination of hardware and software. More so, it depends on the software. Internally, the lights have maximum programmed intensity values and the software allows you "reallocate" power to the colors. It's more of an advanced color balancing feature. One thing the HD lights have over Non-HDs is high-frequency dimming. This is excellent because you won't see banding or flicker when you take pictures or videos of your tank. This flicker is most visible when the non-HDs are dimmed. It also makes it difficult to guarantee a consistent spectrometer-verified spectrum as the discrete LED colors are oscillating between on and off states. For this reason, we recommend installing our clusters in HD-enabled lights. But that's not to say they won't work. There are minimal electrical differences between the HD and Non-HD clusters. A few of our more adventurous beta testers installed them in their non-HDs without much trouble and even shared comparisons between their HD and Non-HD lights.

It took a surprising investment to develop these because we wanted to optimize them in every dimension possible within the limits of AI's platform. We even reverse-engineered myAI, the firmware in the lights, and experimented with many layouts to achieve the performance goals we sought. One such experiment was with injecting code into the myAI runtime to add new sliders and flashing special firmware to the lights to enable them to report the new colors and the name of the type of installed cluster. But with other integrations like AI Cloud, and IoTA (Neptune Systems' wireless control platform), our changes wouldn't play well with those as they would also need to be updated. Since there are understandable risks associated with flashing custom firmware, we forwent that direction. With our clusters, your lights' red and green sliders will control two new colors: Indigo and Cyan (in the case of our Cyan flavors). For the HD-enabled lights, we'll also provide spectrometer-verified presets to help you maximize their spectral performance and take them well beyond the flagships. The best part is, that installation is about as simple as changing a lightbulb.

Support for the 32HD is in the works, but there are some fundamental challenges associated with their thermal and optical systems. Add to that the semiconductor shortages, and it makes it very challenging to bring new innovations. Many established light manufacturers are actually releasing new product generations to combat the shortage by swapping parts for more readily available ones. This has profound impacts on performance, not to mention introducing inconsistencies. We'd rather release a quality upgrade for those lights than be the first to push something.

We'll make an official announcement post soon, and will go in-depth on the various color variants, but until then, our website, www.luxdium.com should cover the bases.

Thanks, and it's a great honor to finally offer such a product!

Is the Cyan puck a light that sits between the Blue and Gold pucks? I don't like heavy blue but also not too much white either. I have my Prime HD set to the middle. It's heavier blue/violet in the morning then ramps up to include more white throughout the afternoon then ramps down to blue/violet again. I also have the UV spectrum going. I assume these pucks don't have that? What light replaces the UV channel?

 

[JNalley]

Is the Cyan puck a light that sits between the Blue and Gold pucks? I don't like heavy blue but also not too much white either. I have my Prime HD set to the middle. It's heavier blue/violet in the morning then ramps up to include more white throughout the afternoon then ramps down to blue/violet again. I also have the UV spectrum going. I assume these pucks don't have that? What light replaces the UV channel?

These have "High Energy Violet" which is what a lot of manufacturers call UV. However, UV begins at 400nm and below, and what the manufacturers are calling their UV usually ends up being 405nm, so it isn't actual UV but near UV.

 

[Karen00]

These have "High Energy Violet" which is what a lot of manufacturers call UV. However, UV begins at 400nm and below, and what the manufacturers are calling their UV usually ends up being 405nm, so it isn't actual UV but near UV.

So does the UV channel in myAI adjust a high energy violet led or does that setting become unusable?

 

[cpschult]

Hm, I have four 26hds. May have to consider this

 

[JNalley]

So does the UV channel in myAI adjust a high energy violet led or does that setting become unusable?

All of the channels are useable, the lights still function as normal, just with a different spectrum. The red and green are swapped out for cyan and indigo ((in the cyan flavor of the light) but are still represented by red and green sliders, and the spectrum hovering in the background will still look as if you're adding red or green). So how you use them doesn't change.

 

[Karen00]

All of the channels are useable, the lights still function as normal, just with a different spectrum. The red and green are swapped out for cyan and indigo ((in the cyan flavor of the light) but are still represented by red and green sliders, and the spectrum hovering in the background will still look as if you're adding red or green). So how you use them doesn't change.

I understand the green and red as that was explained in the comment by luxdium. I was wondering what the UV channel is swapped with so when I slide the UV channel what spectrum am I getting? Another indigo or cyan or something else?

Edit: I meant green and red, not blue and red. I changed blue to green.

 

[JNalley]

I understand the green and red as that was explained in the comment by luxdium. I was wondering what the UV channel is swapped with so when I slide the UV channel what spectrum am I getting? Another indigo or cyan or something else?

Edit: I meant green and red, not blue and red. I changed blue to green.

It's not swapped with anything, it's a High Energy Violet (which is what the UV is in the AI lights), I don't think they're the exact same chips (could be wrong) but it's still a Near UV LED according to the product pages linked above.

 

[JNalley]

@Karen00 see here: