Automated Hood

[Richy]

Cool. I like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9edO7RyURQ


Text from original link..

From the 1st day of setting up my aquarium I toyed with the idea of having a automated way to lift the hood straight up off my tank with the push of a button. This would allow me to use my large tongs, scrapers, etc. without having to take my heavy oak hood off everytime or struggle to work around my hot MH lights.

Well after a lot of planning I finally came up with a system. It's very similar to the systems used to raise and lower flat panel televisions and it works awesome!!

Sorry about the video quality, I used my digital camera.

[Rukus]

pretty neat...really loud and slow though.

I think a better way would be to manually lift it up, and it be spring loaded to ease the lift...

but, seing as i am becoming an electrical engineer...
"the more automated the better"

-Andrew

[superduperwesman]

ahahaha does it really need to go that high? I like sphelps set up better, his whole hood just slides out of the way

[Richy]

And......how might that work??? Pics etc..I have never seen it.

Rich.......

[superduperwesman]

He just has two white rails (small) on the roof and the whole hood slides on them. When I say it like that it sounds like and eye sore but you'd never even notice unless he pointed it out, or until he slides the hood totally out of the way. The top of his tank is pretty close to the roof so it might not be ideal for everyone, but I sure like it. Gave me lots of room to play around trying to catch that stupid Tomato Clown till he finally made that trap.

[Richy]

If you can post some pics along the way it would be nice..See what you can do.. Does it slide up, sideways?

Rich...

[fishaddict]

Richy, I think you did a nice job.
Personally, I don't like to rely on power, always the worry wart - what in case of a power outage? Can you still access the tank?

[superduperwesman]

It slides sideways. But I'm not to keen pictures of his tank cause he's more likely to notice all the little frags that seem to go missing each time I'm over:dance2:

[superduperwesman]

Don't get me wrong yours is cool too

[Richy]

Superwes::dude: get as many as you can....

Fishadict: Holly molly.. That is not my setup..I thought I made that clear when I made the initial post..I put in bold "text from initial post".. That is someone elses setup..I cannot take credit for that.. I posted that up for inspiration for the diy folks and to get some ideas for my setup..
Sorry if it was misleading.. didn't mean it to be.

Rich.............

[superduperwesman]

Just more electricity, motors to wear out, and noise like rukus said. Sliders get you the access you need with out anything really wearing out, same deal with the spring idea, easies use but springs are proabably cheaper then those lifting motors. But your roof is to high above your tank for sliders anyway, or least Steves set up, but I'm sure sliders could be used in a bit different way

[superduperwesman]

But your roof is to high above your tank for sliders anyway, or least Steves set up


Yeah I guess I was also a little confused about who's set up that was, cause I thought yours was in wall, but I thought you were saying that was yours but now I think I got it figured...maybe

[fishaddict]

Sorry about the misunderstanding. :eek: English is my second language only.

[Richy]

Hey no problem.. My fault.

It is hard to say what u mean sometimes just with text. I guess that is why smileys were invented..:)

Rich....

[Steve]

I sortive have the same setup on my system, however I just use a hand crank winch to lift the light stand up.
It works quite well and can easily hold the weight, got it for like 25 bucks and its rated for 4000 to 5000 pounds.
Just have to really make sure the pulleys or whatever you use are strong enough and anchored to the ceiling very well. I had very close call and learned my lesson almost the hard way, one of the eye hooks I was using literally snapped right in half and yes, down came the light stand, fortantely it was only 6 inch drop as I had just started cranking it up, very near disaster. 50 pounds of lights and what not crashing into my tank from 3 feet up may have broke the tank never mind all my bulbs. Anyhoot it works great for me, once installed properly : ) makes maintenance and what not very easy when with just a few cranks of the winch my entire light hood is up and out of the way and open's up the entire top of the tank for maintenance. Before it was a two man operation to get the light hood off my tank which was a real pain in the butt.