Today, i did cut an aluminium plate, and put the 3 LED strips onto it (it has duct tape on the back). I had this plate laying around, so i decided to use it, as it can act as an heat sink if needs be. However, from what i saw, it shouldn't be required, since the LED runs pretty cool.

Anyway, i wired all the LED to my Atmega32U4 board, and sent the serial commands i had programmed. I sent "setLights1FadeIn:60" to have it fade from totally off to totally on over 60 seconds.

The following video shows the result :

(the first caption says "light fading in over 60s", in french, the second one mentions the Atmega32U4 sending PWM signals to the TIP120 transistor controlling the 12V input of the LED, and the last one says that the lights are fully on.

I also made another video to demonstrate how quick the LED turns on and off :

I also sent serial commands : setLights1On and setLights1Off.

The light output seems really high, and it is painful to watch it directly.

However, when placed on the top of my aquarium, i felt like there was less light than with the previous system, so i may end up adding more strips. However, i have to check it properly, since the color difference between the two systems may change drastically the useful light ouput : plants don't care about green light, and yellow is not that important. They use red and blue light more. This LED strip is "cold white", approximately 6000K, so it's more bluish than the previous system.

I conduct some tests later. If i were to add more strips, i would prefer to add warmer light, despite warm light being less efficient, but for a more visually appealing result. After all, the point of an aquarium is to look at it :)