Motorizing a light fixture. Question not answer.

Hello all you DIYers. Hopefully I'm posting this in the right place. I have a 48 inch Mh and PC fixture that is hanging over my tank that i have suspended from cables and counter weighted so that i can lift and lower it for tank maintenance. It works very well but i am getting a neptune apex in the mail tomorrow and my brain has been running since i ordered it. Any one out there know if and how i could motorize the lights with the Apex so that i can raise and lower them with a button on the apex and then if i can do that what would everyone think about having the lights at there highest point when they come on and then lower to simulate sunrise since i can afford LEDs at this point.

 

Interesting concept...not sure if it can be done but still interesting

 

anything can be done!! its beyond my comprehension, but it sounds cool,

 

I'm not sure if an apex could do it, but if you put the light on some sort of motorized crank with a timer, it may work.

 

well thats kinda what i was hoping to hear from some of the apex coders. "in theory" you could just run the motor like a dosing pump and every 5 or 10 minutes or so you run the motor for 1/2 a second or so which in turn would lower the light then be able reverse the polarity with another output and reverse the process.

 

I never thought of it that way.

 

In theory, you could hook it up to a "feed" timer. So when you hit feed, your pumps would reduce and lights would retract away from the tank. Just run that as part of the same program...
(aka, when you hit feed, reduce flow by cutting off most pumps' power. Also turn on outlet for cable retract. The hard part is how to do it without a switch for the reverse part. Or... you could just run the entire thing with a toggle instead of the APEX.)
Outside of maintenance or just generally getting into the tank, I'm not sure why else you would want/need this function.