MaxSpect’s new Jump line of aquarium products are an interesting mix of devices that include a return pump, a gyre pump, protein skimmer and a compelling mid-range LED light. As we started taking a deeper look at the new Blue version of the MaxSpect MJ-L165 LED light we noticed that it has a very interesting feature that we’ve yet to see in the aquarium hobby.
The MJ-L165 light is wirelessly controllable using the Syna-G Cloud app which works without a hub and enables all the modern controls we’ve expect and adds the ability to share light profiles, settings and programs using a simple QR code. If you think about it, a multicolor aquarium light program is little more than a string of numbers to communicate spectrum, intensity, and schedule, so it’s a brilliant idea to encapsulate this data into a QR code.
One of the most frequent requests we get is to share our light programs for various lights and it’s just not a simple thing to export a given file and directly message or email someone – totally first world problems. But sharing a link to an image of a QR code is just about the easiest way we can think of to share light schedules and programs and we can’t wait to try it out to see how it works.
The idea of using a QR code to share light programs seems so simple in retrospect it’s a surprise why it hasn’t been implemented before, but it isn’t a surprise that it happened in China first where QR codes are a dominant method of sharing information and payment via mobile phones. We don’t usually say this but about new features but this is one occasion where we really hope that other manufacturers of multicolor spectrum lights pick up on the idea of implementing QR codes for sharing light schedules and programs, maybe in some far future utopia the QR codes could even work across platforms!
