Automatically adjust sunrise/sunset times of lights.

I have seen this done on another project and I thought it would be a nice little feature to have with the Profilux.

Now that the Profilux can be internet connected, it would be good if it could do a remote call to a website that provides sun-rise and sun-set times for the area your in (maybe using the co-ordinates you set in the location section) and automatically adjust the times upon which your lights ramped up and ramped down.

I agree this wouldn't be a feature used by everyone as most people likely adjust the timing of their lights to match when they are in the home etc, but I still think it would be a good feature to have. We currently have the ability to set our lights to the moon cycle, why not allow the ability to perform sunrise/sunset times :)

Looking forward to your feedback.

Ben

Just an update to this. I know AI Director has a feature that checks the local weather in an area you select, for example the great barrier reef and then if it's raining it will adjust the LEDs to be dimmed etc.

What would be a cool feature is to allow the Profilux to perform something similar. Since I'm running a great barrier reef type Light Project, it would be good if the Profilux could get the sunrise and sunset times, then adjust the Light Project automatically so that the Mitras adjust to match those, whilst also checking the weather report for that location (using the co-ordinates on the location section of GCC) and then adjust if raining, storm etc.

I think this would allow the most natural mimic of nature in our tanks. You could also include an option to automatically adjust the temperature based on the season, i.e. drop the temp by 1-2 degrees max in the winter, increase in the summer.

Not everyone would use these features, but I think they'd be a huge killer feature if implemented.

Ben

+1

If this feature will be available in future I will use it.


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If it's not possible to add in something that will check the sunrise/set times automatically, then would it be possible to allow us to set this ourselves for the year. So we could get the sunrise/set times for Fiji and input those ourselves into a table of some sort and the Profilux would adjust the lighting schedule to follow those times.

Additional to the sunrise/sunset times for location, it would also be good if we can have an option to set a seasonal temperature too. Again taking Fiji for example and get the average high and low temperature each month for the last year and we input those values and the Profilux would during the day pick a random higher value to run at and a lower random value to run at during the evening.

Ben

Hi Ben,

we did exactly this for the next firmware and GHL Control Center:
the "dynamic nominal value" can now also work with tables. You set temperatures at certain dates and ProfiLux will calculate all the temp. between these dates. The "night change" will also be considered.
It is in BETA-Testing, the GEOMAR institute is already using it for scientific experiments. Besides temperature all other probes can work with seasonal values.
I think we launch the 6.17 in a week, details are to come soon.

To the seasonal light
This is the next step. There is only a small problem and I am not sure how to solve it in the best way, so comments and thoughts are very welcome.
We have 32 dimming channels, each of these channels can have up to 12 points per day.
I think it is nearly impossible to program for all channels for all points for many days different times and/or intensities.
We need a more clever and easy way to achieve a seasonal lighting for many different dimming channels.

Has anyone good ideas?

Hi Matthias,

I am so pleased to have read this and overjoyed that the feature will be available soon.

In regards to the seasonal light, rather than focusing on the 32 channels, would it be better to focus on the 9 channel associated with the Mitras firstly and develop from there? This would reduce the need to find a solution just yet for 32 channels and allow a chance to experiment with different ways to perform the functionality. Get it right for a small number, before focusing on the large number of channels. It would also allow you to see how well this is received by the general public.

Just a thought until some more cleverer people than myself add further to the discussion :)

Quote:

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Has anyone good ideas?

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How about this

• If seasonal lightning is activated, channel dimming points are always related to spring/autumn equinox
• Related to the latitude a sunset/sundown time is calculated for the equinox date and shown in the diagram (maybe adaptable)
• The dimming curve is related to actual date compressed or stretched as neccessary between sunset and sundown and also between sundown and sunset. (summer: day is stretched/night is compressed; winter: Day is compressed, night is stretched)
• Maybe a shift parameter (moving sunset/high noon/sundown/ midnight) a certain number of hours fore or back would be helpful
• Also cool would be a "general year light courve" designed similar to the daily curves where you can set a multiplier for the max power output (Winter 50% / Summer 100%, interpolated in between)