Amie's Blog

This is a teaser to show you what I use to program my aquarium tanks with.

We are pretty involved when it comes to Christmas lights every year. My husband kept setting up more and more lights until finally I said, "enough!". I can't stand those houses that have so many lights that you have to wear sun glasses just to look at them. But he wanted to always be the house that kids would always say, "remember that ONE house that had those christmas lights that we'd always go see every year". So we compromised. We have significantly less lights, mostly LEDs now, and we have set them to music, via the computer.

Here are 2 videos that aren't Christmas, so I don't have to bore you with the seasonal stuff in July.





The best way to describe how this works is to think of it as a bunch of extension cords that I can control using a computer program. Whatever is plugged into that extension cord can be turned on and off, up or down, fade in, fade out, controlled by timers or by events that happen, like motion, for instance.

As far as pricing goes, the standard basic unit that handles up to 16 channels is the most expensive because you are also purchasing the software and the ethernet connection to make it all work. That price ranges from $225-$400, depending on how much DYI you want to do. If you add more channels, they can be daisy-chained on to the first unit and they are 1/2 the price because you don't need to buy the software after the first purchase. Those units run from about $170-$300. Each new unit adds 16 channels, or extension cord connections. These are not the sale prices, because they always have a sale in June-July and you can expect the prices to be able 20% off.

I will start a thread soon on the message board about how I am incorportating this into my aquarium setup in order to monitor my tanks. Afterall, Christmas is only for a month, breeding happens all year long!