Hydra HD puts the Hydra 26 and 52 into ‘HyperDrive’

The Aqua Illumination Hydra HD is a next generation of Hydra 26 and Hydra 52 lights that look identical to their predecessors. The similarity of the new Hydra 26 HD and Hydra 52 HD is only superficial because there’s a host of radical new features under the hood.

The first new change to the Hydra HD lights is that they now access myAI by connecting directly to your home wifi router just like the AI Prime LED. This new approach to connecting the Hydra HD lights means you no longer need to buy any kind of connector like the AI Director to get wireless and cloud access of AI’s best LED lights.

hydraHD hyperdrive — The look of the Hydra HD’s color channels when they are all set at 100%

But the really exciting new change to the Hydra HD is a new LED driving system called HyperDrive which lets users get the most from the LED channels they are using with the Hydra HD. Nearly all LED lights have a maximum power output, and a maximum power level for each channel.

With HyperDrive the Hydra 26 and Hydra 52 can redistribute the available power so you can ‘overdrive’ the LED colors that you actually want to use. What HyperDrive essentially means is that now if you have a Hydra HD, you’ll be able to not only turn down the white, green and red channels of color, but also turn up the power on the blue, royal blue and UV channels.

hydraHD hyperdrive 2 — When you turn down one color channel, the ‘ceiling’ on the other channels gets higher allowing you to ‘HyperDrive’ the LEDs

This new advancement in the driving of LED lights reflects a common complaint about investing in a powerful new LED light but only using a fraction of its overall power when the light is custom color tuned. Further more, the new Hydra HD include slightly more blue LEDs than the regular Hydra 26 and Hydra 52 currently have.

Of course the built-in settings of the Hydra HD won’t allow you to HyperDrive the LEDs beyond what they can handle in terms of power and heat and this is neatly displayed in the control panel for myAI. The development of HyperDrive is one of the most exciting new advances in high end LED lighting fixtures we’ve seen in a long time, and we can’t wait to start using the Hydra HD lights so we can turn down the colors we don’t want, and turn up the blues.

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Jake Adams

Jake Adams has been an avid marine aquarist since the mid 90s and has worked in the retail side of the marine aquarium trade for more than ten years. He has a bachelor’s degree in Marine Science and has been the managing editor of ReefBuilders.com since 2008. Jake is interested in every facet of the marine aquarium hobby from the concepts to the technology, rare fish to exotic corals, and his interests are well documented through a very prolific career of speaking to reef clubs and marine aquarium events, and writing articles for aquarium publications across the globe. His primary interest is in corals which Jake pursues in the aquarium hobby as well as diving the coral reefs of the world.