The Lumu smartphone accessory for measuring ambient light is not the first device we’ve seen developed and produced for photographic use but dang it, we want to see one of these designed for aquarium use! How hard could it be to take that light sensor, waterproof it, and put it on a cable so that aquarists can finally have an easy way to measure and log lighting levels in an aquarium?
The Lumu light meter is tailored with lomography in mind and paired with the included smartphone application, it automagically tells the user what settings to dial into the camera for perfect exposure. This application is soooo close to an aquarium powerhouse feature we can almost taste it! Stick the tethered light meter where you want to measure light, and a modified version of the Lumu app could easily tell you PAR, Kelvin and maybe even some spectral qualities.
Better yet, with all these light levels in hand it would be just another step to approximate the quality and quantity of the light for suitability with certain corals, taking the guesswork out of where to place new coral frags and colonies. With photography being such a bigger market than aquariums, it could be a long time before this same brilliant idea is repurposed for field testing with corals, giant clams and live plants, but at just $149 for this highly refined accessory, there’s definitely a potential market for it with reef aquarists. [Lumu]
