Herpstat lighting question

[djnewman001]

For anyone using a herpstat and use the ramping lighting feature for your UVB, does it ramp down to 0% power (off)? I know it won’t turn them on or off at specific times but does the UVB actually turn off?

I’m currently using a WiFi smart plug to get the lighting schedules and it’s been working for the 2 years Ive had my beardie but every once in awhile it loses connection and doesn’t turn the light on. To be fair it’s only happened like 4 times in 2 years but I’d love to get a herpstat set up.

Thanks for reading my rambling.

 

[CooperDragon]

I chimed in a bit on your other thread, but as far as I understand it, the fluorescent tubes want to be on or off and won't handle dimming or ramping. When I've thought about this in the past, the best I could think of was to use multiple UVB lights of varying intensity and just turn them on and off in sequence. As it stands, I just turn the UVB on (mechanical timer) after an hour or so of the basking light being on, and then turn it off an hour or so before it turns off. The herpstat dims the basking light to handle ramping pretty well. It kind of depends on the bulb and I've noticed that sometimes it will cause flickering but it works fairly well in general. Newer models may be better at it too - the one I have is several years old now.

 

[djnewman001]

Oh yea I responded to that thread with all my info haha. Oops. I should have just kept the question here. My apologies. I’ll put my response to your answer here to keep that other thread to the OP.

Thanks that answered a lot of my questions. I currently have a herpstat 1 and just got it so I haven’t set it up yet but that’s what got me thinking of the ramping of the UVB, if it worked that way I was going to send this back and get the herpstat 4 or 6.

So I think I’ll keep the herpstat1 for the Arcadia deep heat projector, kee running my basking light on the dimmer. My basement is kind of chilly this time of year but I run a CHE full time on an on/off thermostat set at 77, it usually only runs at night but it keeps the cool side at around 72-73 at the ground. He never has a specific spot that he sleeps in so I wanted to keep a “night time” gradient through the cage.

Sorry for the rambling.