The AI LED firmware 3 has been out for almost a week now and we’re really pleased with all the new upgrades. You gotta love the beauty of electronic devices like the AI LED which can deliver new functionality through cost-free firmware upgrades that make the product feel new and shiny, even if it’s a few years old.
The most notable upgrades to the third revision of the AI LED firmware include the three channel control for separately adjusting your white, blues and royal blue LEDs. Also really useful is the advanced timer sequencing which makes it very easy and simple to program events in the photoperiod of the AI LED. Now you ramp the timers up to 240 minutes whereas before it was limited to 55 minutes.
What is particularly fun is the thunderstorm mode. You wouldn’t think this feature would matter much but after running it on EcoReef Two next to the blogging desk, it’s actually really cool to have a dynamic light setting; the main lights dim to about 20% of total intensity, and then the whites flash somewhat randomly giving a realistic impression that a thunderstorm and lightning is really going on over the reef.
Overall we’ve found the AI LED Firmware 3 to be well polished, it delivers valuable features and it is extremely easy and intuitive to program. Flashing the enw firmware to the controller was a cinch even if it did require us to dust off the old windows pc to do it, the linear navigation menu is super easy to get around and we’ll just reiterate how awesome it is to have the new control features delivered in a free firmware updates. Upgradeable firmware is one of the things that adds long term value to performance products like the AI LED, and we wish more electronic aquarium products will benefit from upgradeable firmware in the future.
