THE STORY OF INTAQO

3. 8. 2016

I went to Hornbach store behind my house and ended up buying a simple cheap LED dimmer (8 EUR) with remote control. The issue with it was, that it is a DYI component, which connects on the cable in between the power source and the lamps. So I would either have to cut the cables of the original power sources delivered with the lights, or buy a new 24V power source.

 

The dimmer is a simple device, which allows to set the intensity of the LED lights in about 6 steps. The downside is that there is no possibility of scheduling. So I use one lamp with the original scheduler from the lamps manufacturer and the other lamp I operate manually with this remote operated dimmer.

28. 7. 2016

I have finally decided to replace my T5 lamps used in my aquarium. Before, there were 4x80W T5 neon tubes in my aquarium setup. 320W of lights produces quite a lot of heat and the consumption is not insignificant.

The decision was to use LED tubes replacement, which promised to compensate the light quality with half of the wattage.

So I went for high-end LEDs which are mountable in the T5 holders. 2 things surprised me after the package arrived:

  1. The LED tubes are divided in half and each half has its own power source (adapter). So 4 220v sockets were needed compared to the 2 which were originally used. Each of the 4 lamp parts had its own 2A adapter.
  2. The LED dimmer which came with the lights looks like quite outdated for the price (80 EUR) and had very limited functionality for my liking.

Another joint problem was that the dimmer was designed to handle only one of these big lamps. So I either had to buy another dimmer for 80EUR or to switch on the lights on one of the lamps with the electrical clock I used before.

Another problem of its own with the dimmer was that it you configure the required timing using the buttons on the device. I have the aquarium at home set up in a way that when I want to access the technology in the stand under the tank, I need to push away the couch. The couch is quite heavy. While I am happy to do it every 2 months when I need to clean the filters or replace CO2, to do this every time I want to modify the lights seemed very unreasonable. (sometimes you just want to switch the lights off for a reason, or let them on longer in the evening).