The AI Powerpuck is so close to making the Vega the most customizable LED reef aquarium light ever that we can almost taste it. If twenty LED channels of control isn’t enough to get you hot and bothered about the AI Vega, then perhaps selecting the colors for twenty different LEDs will do it.
Long teased and promised, the Powerpucks for the AI Vega just went up for preorder, and they’ll be shipping in “early April”. Early could mean as soon as a week from now or a few weeks down the road. Sure the Vega is so new that technically it doesn’t need to upgrade jack for several years, if not until 2022.
But how much of what we do for our aquariums is necessary anyway? Getting some Powerpucks to populate that spankin’ new AI Vega is about complete, no-holds-barred spectral control. Who cares what uses we’ll find for the still bleeding edge powerpucks already in there; coasters, refugium lights?
For $50 you can add five LED colors of your choosing to your existing light; there are four different choices for the big center Cree XM-L diode and eleven options for the outer ring. The nifty web interface of the Powerpuck Store even has a real-time spectral output graph so you can see how your color selection will affect the spectral output.
Perhaps one of the fanciest parts of the whole pick-your-own LED light scheme is that you won’t have to program your new colors when you install the powerpuck into the AI Vega. You see, the Powerpucks are holding a bit of code in their circuitry that lets the AI Controller know what new shades it has to play with. If that’s not worth trying out a powerpuck or two we don’t know what is. [AquaIllumination]
