Monsoon Light Port

The Monsoon Free Light Port is an LED plug that screws into any standard female G 1/4 port.  It includes two LEDs that can be easily swapped without tools.  One is a narrow angle LED for lighting up tubing, while the other is a wide angle LED for lighting up a reservoir.  The color of the LED matches the color of the housing. In this case it’s red, however for housings with no color like the chrome or black then the LED will be blue. UV leds will be available at some point in time. The packaging is fairly typical for a part that costs ~$10 – simply a plastic bag:

Opening up the package you’ll find the light port itself – a machine 2 part housing with a glass window as well as two o-rings.  One that matches the color of the housing and one that is always black.  It should be noted that the LED color matches the housing.  The narrow angle LED is sleeved in black while the wide angle is sleeved with matching colored sleeve to the housing.  There were however no instructions to tell you this. The sleeve itself looks of very high quality, however as it’s not pulled perfectly tight, the shadow of the wire can be seen:

The housing unscrews and the rubber grommet that secures the LED inside can be slid off enabling the LED to be removed from the housing and changed:

The light port can then be attached to a Monsoon Free rotary like so:

It should be noted that unlike the compression fittings, the light port does not match the diameter of the rotary.  This is presumably so that it is compatible with more reservoirs.  Power is supplied via a  molex connector.  While this is convenient it is however bulky.  It is also not the type of pass-through molex that could be stacked.  If you were to use many of these in a project I imagine that you would need to change this and either resleeve with a different connector or make a custom wiring harness.

Light Port Testing

Here I have some comparison photos of two light ports at either end of a 2 foot piece of tubing.  The easiest way to do a comparison is to open each photo in a new tab and then toggle between the two.

Clear Tube – No Dye

Daytime:

Night:

Clear tube and water gives the best output at night, however during the day it can look a little weak.

Clear Tube and Mayhems X1 Blood Red Dye:

Daytime:

Night:

As can be seen there is almost no difference in daylight, and very little at night time.  The “Blood Red” dye is just too dark to let the light through.  If you’re going to run dye then it will need to be something very light in order to let the light through.

Red Tubing – No Dye:

Daytime:

Night:

As can be seen – the Red Tube gives up some brightness in return for a more normal coloring during the day.  The length of the light effect is reduced however.  Of course as white plasticizer leech builds up the brightness will of course get even weaker.

Conclusion

I was naive in my hopes as to what the light port could achieve   I’d hoped that it could light up a dark red dye in the tube and I’d also hoped that the effect would even look great under daylight.  The reality is that this is a showpiece for dark areas and when used under that circumstance and with only water or weak dyes then it works very well.  Therefore while I was initially disappointed I don’t think that my expectations were necessarily fair.  In addition before Monsoon enabled this there was nothing else on the market that was marketed to do this.  The quality of the product is very high and Including both narrow and wide angle LEDs is a nice touch, however I do wish the LED’s could be brighter still.  To really perfect the product a little note about the LEDs and a smaller (or stackable) power adapter would have been nice. At the end of the day it’s a niche product, increasing the brightness could make it much more mainstream.

9/10