Quote:
Originally Posted by SKB_Hamsters
Your DIY cage looks amazing and very spacious!
With the LED lights do you have them on at night when watching your hamster? As I you do I would recommend Red LED lights instead as hamster can't see very well in the red end of the light spectrum therefore allows us to watch them without disturbing them too much and you can get to see what they really get up to when they think no one is watching.
|
Thanks for your kind words.
I am quite pleased with how its turned out, it is way better than what I thought it would be when I started on this project. I heard people say to get the biggest cage you can and this was indeed the biggest I could get away with without making my room look too cluttered. Any bigger would have also increased the price of materials by more than I wanted to spend on it, this cage wasn't the cheapest to build as it is.
As I said in my first post, the lighting is something I am not happy with and will be changed soon. This is one of the few errors I made designing this cage and will be done and redone untill its right. Im planning to replace either the centre strip or the two outer strips with red LEDs. I've been trying to find LED chips that are half way between visible red and infrared to reduce the amount to green and blue light as much as possible but this ain't easy with the LED's I want coming on reels or either 1000 or 5000, I don't need quite that many. I have found some which I'm going to order soon. These LED's have to be a specific surface mount chip due to the trunking that the LED's are mounted in. The new LED's would then need to be soldered to a flexible LED strip. Replacing the LED's isn't a complx job, its just time consuming and fiddly with such small LED chips. If I used larger 3 or 5 mm through hole LED's, they would protrude through the trunking, stick out, look ugly and if the hamster bit one of the lens, it could shatter spraying tiny chunks of plastic everywhere and expose live terminals (all be it 10 VDC). This is not something I deem to be acceptable. The current LED's are moreless the same height as the thickness of the trunking's plastic and sits almost flush with the trunking reducing the above issue substantially.
Currently the lights are set to come on at 1630 and turn off at 2330, however they can be made to switch at whatever time I choose (within 1 second) and these times are only for testing everything. They can also be turned on/off at any time manually.
Once I have completed this upgrade, I plan to use the warn white lights as a day lights and for when I need to do a spotclean or full cleanout ect since those will be done at night when the hamster is awake. Red LED's will be on during normal night time hours.
Indeed, the point you are making is a very good one and highlights one of my design errors. It is something I'm working on and should be done within a week or so, I won't be happy untill the lighting looks right (that's what happens when you play with theatre lighting for almost 20 years
).
Rest assured, I am working on it as fast as finances and Royal Mail allows
Thanks for your feedback
Morgan