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4d1c3member
61 posts
Location: nsw australia


Posted:
hey has any on e ever seen uv light black lights in a portable form i want something i can take out twirling with me to make glowsticks or neon stuff show up really bright

the risk is the rush


Bendymember
750 posts
Location: Adelaide, SA, Australia


Posted:
You can buy black light (blue UV) fluorescent tubes at most lighting stores. These can then be fitted to any fluro light fitting (including desk lamps etc).However I recommend getting the bigger ones (36 watt I think) and buying a fluorescent lighting fixture. You can then get the fixture fitted with a plug that you can use on any electrical outlet. This can be done professionally, some fixtures come with a kit to do this yourself, or get your best friend who happens to be an electrician to do it for free winkOf course this works if you have an outlet nearby. Not so good in the bush.Alternatively some novelty shops sell mini blacklights for about twice as much as you can make a big one for smile------------------Iggity-aggity-oop-eh-eh! Ziggity-zaggity-zoo-ah-ah! Oooh-ooh-phblt! Eh-eh-ackh! Flippity-flappity-floop!

Courage is the man who can stop after only one peanut


Mushinkatomember
164 posts
Location: Sheffield, South Yorkshire, UK


Posted:
Did someone say 'bush'..?? Oops.. sorry .. wrong website.. rolleyesOh, and as for portable UV lights.. I us a normal 4ft tube at home and was wondering if anyone with lots of knowlege about electrickery could tell us.. would it be possible to run it off a car battery..?? (would some sort of transformer be required..?)Depending on your budget, I guess the best thing for UV outdoors would be a small generator.. and you could plug in a decent sound system to drown out the noise of the damn thing too !! (or several miles of extension cable..??)------------------Kato

Kato


Bendymember
750 posts
Location: Adelaide, SA, Australia


Posted:
Methinks yes it can be run off a car battery. Josh and Katinca should be able to answer better on this one, as they brought some lighting to our last burn.Which makes me wonder why I am answering with this rather uninformative post smile

Courage is the man who can stop after only one peanut


sunbeamSILVER Member
old hand
1,032 posts
Location: Madrid, United Kingdom


Posted:
Um... dicy, did you have a look at the shop on this site?Go to 'rave gear' and it's on the top of the page. Good luckS------------------Life in the circus ain't easy but the folks on the outside don't know yeah well the tent goes up and the tent goes down and all that they see is the show and the ladies on the horses look so pretty and the lions are looking real mad and some of the clowns are happy and some of the clowns are sad. Welcome to the freakshow.. here we go (Freakshow by Ani di Franco)

"I don't take drugs. I am drugs" - Salvador Dali

sunny


DomBRONZE Member
Carpal \'Tunnel
3,009 posts
Location: Bristol, UK


Posted:
Possible uses include.. locating scorpions in the desert!!!!What! How? Not that I'll ever need to know, but I need to know!

Marsmember
6 posts
Location: San Jose, Ca USA


Posted:
Mushinkato - You can, i just don't know how.. i've had a few friends hook up small blacklights along the inside of their cars... it's pretty cool, actually.. they jurryrigged switches and everything. (o;

~Mars The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate its contents. -- H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu


Choobmember
6 posts

Posted:
Re: Runing lights off of batteries.You're going to run into a number of issues here. First, most lights run on AC power (which is variable by country in voltage and delivery hertz rating), so if you want to run them off a finite power source (i.e. a battery) you will need an inverter which can deliver the amount of power of your light. So if you have a 300W black light you will need at LEAST a 300W inverter, though it is usually better to have one that is a little bigger. There are two types of inverters; modified sine and true sine wave. True sine wave is more expensive, is a little bit lossy (since it uses some of the power to make the pure wave), but delivers overall MUCH cleaner power than you get from a wall socket. Modified sine is less sophisticated and produces distortion which can harm whatever you are powering. It can produce more heat as well as buzzing and other side effects.Car batteries are shallow cycle, meaning, they are only meant to discharge slightly (like 10%) of their total amp-hours (which is the measurement of the total amount amps it can deliver over a period of time). Marine batteries are deep cycle and can be discharge down to almost 30% even (depending on brand and amphours).Lighting uses a *lot* of energy. If you were to run a 300W blacklight for just three hours, that's 900W. Convert to amp-hours:total watt-hours= 900Wmultiple by 1 or 1.5 for inverter loss= 1035the DC system voltage (you battery voltage)= 12divide watts with loss by system voltage:1035/12 = ~87 Amp-hours(simply, you divide watts by system voltage to get amp hours)The total amp-hours would be subtracted from your overall amp-hour storage of your battery, from which you could determine the percentage of discharge.At a festival last summer, I ran a 1000W stage light off my renewable energy system for about 8hours. That's a lot of amp-hours for just running a light.(your turn to do the math)DC lighting is a whole other story.-- chaoswith love from a renewable energy geek

CarreySILVER Member
member
180 posts
Location: London, England.


Posted:
Wow, Choob, I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy...But just for interest's sake, what's the practical upshot of all that? I mean, what's the best idea you have to make it run for longer on less? What would you use?

Choobmember
6 posts

Posted:
Running longer on less....Well, the big issue is that incadescent lighting converts a good amount of energy into heat while making light (even worse for halogen bulbs). Blacklights can be flourescent or incandescent. The difference between them is that the quantity of blacklight present in incandescent is so low that high wattage is required. Most common blacklight situations will use flourescent.The issue now is getting a blacklight that can balance strength of brightness with energy useage. Good ways to "amplify" this light would probably be to have it as close to whatever wants to be "uv'd" as possible. And the best thing to do before buying blacklights (or anything really) is to look into how well it performs in various circumstances. See what others have to say.Now, if someone develops a blacklight LED, I will be absolutely on top of it. Imagine rigging up a glowing costume wired with blacklight LEDs and a battery pack? For powering it, if you're out far away from wall-sockets, finding the lowest cost, yet most reliable power option is important. Chances are you won't be plunking down for the most top notch pure sine inverter or a super-expensive, high amp-hour battery. There is a whole range of options for those situations depending on money, time, and many other factors.Half a year ago I wouldn't have been able to say probably any of this, but since it has become one of my primary research objectives, I felt almost compelled to offer some advice for portable/remote energy/lighting etc.

Shouden-CrDSILVER Member
Veteran Member
495 posts
Location: Tampa, FL, USA


Posted:
In addition to the highlights in the two posts above this...You CANNOT just buy a big blacklight tube and just "plug" it into a flourescent fixture. This is coming from someone who owns a 4' blacklight fixture. (: The tubes themselves are 75W, and you would be hard-pressed to find a flourescent fixture that pushes 150W. I tried putting one of my bulbs into someone's kitchen fixture once and it just *barely* lit up. Definately wasnt bright by any means...PLURRÇRÐ

-=ÇrazyRaverÐude=-


TheGrynygoggmember
47 posts
Location: England, just north of London


Posted:
I work in an aquatic wholesale warehouse. I have access to the choke units and can order the blacklight tubes from 12" to 60". Well 60" is the biggest I've seen but I'm sure I could get hold of bigger. If your in the uk, maybe we can strike up a deal. I saw in a shop recently, battery blacklights. Now, if you rigged up enough mirrors, you'd have a powerful beam which you could use to destroy planets, perhaps. That is it. I'm done now.

Just ignore me. Everyone else does.


bhawkmember
48 posts
Location: MD, USA


Posted:
How about using UV cold cathode tubes? they dont make much heat, and from what i understand, they dont use too much power either. Im sure you could easily find 12V ones that plugs into your car since they are popular with car and computer case modders.

Arcmember
17 posts
Location: San Diego, CA, USA


Posted:
Choob,Very cool. Did you run your 1000W system off of marine batteries?What's the cost of a modified sine inverter? I take it that wiring it up is pretty straight forward then. Are there any hidden gotchas?Thanks in advance-------------------------I'm the man with the light bulb head, I turn myself on in the dark. shockedArc

crazed_bunnymember
12 posts
Location: Sydney, Australia


Posted:
quote:
Now, if someone develops a blacklight LED, I will be absolutely on top of it. Imagine rigging up a glowing costume wired with blacklight LEDs and a battery pack?
you can get UV LEDs that operate at 395nm... would these work??See Here

Choobmember
6 posts

Posted:
While this discussion is getting somewhat more technical than "social," I will refrain from making it more so by directing those who want to know more about the solar system I was part of developing to follow this link for more information about the various components and other technical information about how it all works. While it seems and sounds rather straightforward I will offer a caveat: working with electricity if like working with fire; if you don't follow proper safety procedures and codes, you will possibly get hurt or destroy your equipment. On a lighter note, I did look into UV LEDs a bit more and it seems like there are a number of options for this depending on what you want to do with them. I stumbled across this great page, which has information about various kinds of UV LEDs, as well as intructions on how to HACK certain kinds of blue LEDs into UV! An interesting task for those technically inclined.regards,chaos *editted for silly pseudo-html problem [This message has been edited by Choob (edited 23 January 2002).]

Storytellermember
19 posts
Location: San Jose California


Posted:
Actually, you can but hand-held blacklighI know someone who has one he uses for finding mushrooms. I've never seen another one, but the light he has is about 8" long and has an orange blinking hazard light that can be turned on or off.------------------ Ribbons of color twining and flux, open tomorrow for me

Ribbons of color twining and flux, open tomorrow for me


4d1c3member
61 posts
Location: nsw australia


Posted:
hey ok about all that stuff but alot of that is a lot to complicated for a 14 year old that just wanted to know if there is a shop wouild be great if it was in sydney australia that just sold the fitting the light and everything about an 8 inch that ran on d cell batterys or any normal batterys i just wanted to put it on the ground when i was twirling to make glow sticks or light pois stand up alot more i own a black light about 20 inch but runs off power point and wouldnt have a clue how to get it to work any other way but thanks for all the techincal stuff

the risk is the rush


crazed_bunnymember
12 posts
Location: Sydney, Australia


Posted:
Jaycar Electronics sell some blacklight stuff... try there

4d1c3member
61 posts
Location: nsw australia


Posted:
hey thanks crazy bunny but couldnt find anything there were abouts do you live in sydney please keep the replies coming

the risk is the rush



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