Did you get the light screens in the end? What do you think of them?
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Light Screens/Backgrounds - any cheaper options?
- Thread starter jasonjleach
- Start date
zozo
Member
Yes DIY it and you are done for a few quid... All you need is a frosted glass foil on the back panel and an RGB LED strip behind the tank on the cabinet pointing up. And a natural white coloured LED mounted to the top rim of the tank pointing down. Both strips are in the length of the tank. Then you will need (at least) a 4-channel LED timer controller, 3 channels to control the bottom RGB LED colours and 1 channel to control the top natural white LED.
For the bottom strip, you just lay it down on the cabinet pointing up no need to mount it, For the top strip you put it in a ridged Aluminum led profile, and glue this profile to a few pieces 10mm x 15mm aluminium or plastic corner profile but leave a gap between the corner and the strip in the glass thickness. So you can hook the strip to the top of the tank pointing the LED down.
Give the bottom LED a darker colour of your preferences with a good controller you can make any colour of the rainbow. Then you have a dark colour shining up spreading over the frosted foil and have a white colour from above shining down over the frosted foil. And that is also what natural light will do, it starts brighter and white light at the top and colours darker when it goes deeper into the water. Depending on the dimmed brightness both colours will gradually mix somewhere down the way.
What I usually see is completely upside down bright at the bottom and darker at the surface... How would the sun do that? That's a rather unnatural diorama look the wrong way around.
Will give this effect
Later
And this I did 10 years ago with manual ancient stuff, the modern controllers are cheaper and more advanced and better nowadays and Bluetooth and the phone app... Back then this was done for +/- €40 with stuff from Aliexpress...
For the bottom strip, you just lay it down on the cabinet pointing up no need to mount it, For the top strip you put it in a ridged Aluminum led profile, and glue this profile to a few pieces 10mm x 15mm aluminium or plastic corner profile but leave a gap between the corner and the strip in the glass thickness. So you can hook the strip to the top of the tank pointing the LED down.
Give the bottom LED a darker colour of your preferences with a good controller you can make any colour of the rainbow. Then you have a dark colour shining up spreading over the frosted foil and have a white colour from above shining down over the frosted foil. And that is also what natural light will do, it starts brighter and white light at the top and colours darker when it goes deeper into the water. Depending on the dimmed brightness both colours will gradually mix somewhere down the way.
What I usually see is completely upside down bright at the bottom and darker at the surface... How would the sun do that? That's a rather unnatural diorama look the wrong way around.
Will give this effect
Later
And this I did 10 years ago with manual ancient stuff, the modern controllers are cheaper and more advanced and better nowadays and Bluetooth and the phone app... Back then this was done for +/- €40 with stuff from Aliexpress...
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