With Ecotech Marine filing a trademark for a new LED aquarium light under the mark “Radion” we wonder how the company that revolutionized the aquarium circulation pump, is going to put their mark on the LED market. We know the team behind Ecotech Marine is a sharp bunch of individuals with a heavy engineering background that produced one original pump and now appear to be looking to head into the aquarium lighting market.
There is a flood of questions that comes to our minds regarding the Ecotech Radion LED. Will there be tons of surface mounted (SMT) LEDs or some killer multi-chip LEDs? How are they going to handle cooling? Some awesome liquid cooling, crazy heat sinks? What kind of controls will be baked in? Will there we some fancy wireless aspect? Will it sync with the Vortech pumps?
Speculating on a product can be fun and we’re hoping there will be at least a prototype at MACNA we can get our hands on. Right off the bat we’ve always been impressed with the styling of the Vortech pumps and that “easy on the eyes” look has to be intensified with a light fixture. Imagine you’re going to be spending a heck of a lot more time looking at the light fixture, so we can only assume that it will be sleek and expertly finished.
Will it have a brushed aluminum look? Stealth black? Apple iPhone white? Like we mentioned before, there are some pretty aesthetically pleasing lights on the market like the Mame Ecolight RGB LED , the AI Sol, Maxspect Mazarra and even some of the Ecoxotic lights but we’re pretty certain the Ecotech Radion will get plenty of positive reviews on looks. We’re fairly sure this will be a compact light no matter what form it takes. We can see Ecotech Marine getting the form factor as tight as possible without sacrificing on performance and efficiency.
Another thing to consider is whether the Radion LED will be a spotlight, longer fixture in a variety of lengths or modular? Considering Ecotech Marine’s approach to the market with the Vortech, the Ecotech Radion has to be more modular most likely covering a 2 ft. by 2ft area with the ability to link multiple units together somehow.
Going out on a limb, we can see Ecotech tapping into some high-powered, multi-chip LEDs in a variety of controllable colors — maybe even an RGB version to let you get a true rainbow of color options. Either way you break it out, Ecotech will have to include the ability to manipulate color rendition and lighting intensity to keep up with the market.
The wireless modules they created with the original wireless Vortech MP40W are a natural fit for the Radion. The small size of the existing wireless board could easily be added to the Radion allowing it to talk to both the lights and the Vortech pumps to do some pretty crazy things. Look at the wave (pun intended) Ecotech Marine made with their standing wave across three separate aquariums at MACNA a few years back. You can imagine rolling cloud cover, lightning, maybe even having a true color dawn to dusk cycle taken from an actual reef pre-programmed in.
Take the wireless feature with the Vortech to and allow it to talk and sync with the Ecotech Radion light to marry the light and water movement changes in a true dawn to dusk cycle in the wild. Throw on top of that some rolling “storm” feature to not only simulate cloud cover and lighting but having these virtual lighting storms take on a new life with your Vortech’s kicking into a wavemaking frenzy. Like the Ecosmart controller’s abilty to receive firmware upgrades, with even more of an electronic component to LED lighting we’d be surprised if the Radion didn’t also have firmware upgrading.
Due to that obnoxious LED aquarium patent, it is possible that Ecotech explored licensing the rights to have controllable features built in rather than hoping their systems would be compatible with off the shelf lighting controllers. But if not, Ecotech probably has some pretty robust features baked in to let you dial in your system and probably have some more features in the works to easily communicate with the most popular controllers.
One thing is for certain — Ecotech is releasing an LED aquarium light and it may be a small “nano” light, a hardcore spotlight or a full blown fixture. So with what you already know about Ecotech Marine, do you have any thoughts on what the forthcoming Ecotech Radion LED light might be like?
