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Chinese HID lamps - help please


Hazara

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My cunning plan was to go from Fluorescent to LED lighting - my maths were the price difference vs energy consumption vs heat utilisation etc..

So I got a 200 + lumen led strip from China as a test.. it does okay as a low light but for the price ($30 or so), wasnt delivering what I wanted. I had plans to slowly buy a whole grid without shewho noticing the packages :wink:

I had been interested in HID but the price commitment was higher than I can afford as a test, but a mate just gave me one to test and the results are amazing!

I'm just using a 6000k one, hooked up to a computer PSU but have a couple of questions...

1. The tank cover is about 3" high, and heat is an issue so I have a PSU fan running and that's keeping temps at an acceptable level, but the heat is radiated... hard to explain but it "feels" like a high UV source?

2. I'm just using a single line off the power supply - is that enough to to properly run a 35w HID?

3. Over winter, would it be possible to bleed the excess heat off the ballast to heat the tank as well?

Cheers in advance - and apologies if this has been thrashed to death before, I did a search but didnt see anything.

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You mean a 12v halogen? They're usually pretty poor efficiency compared to fluoros. Something in the 20 lumens per watt range vs 80 for fluoros and probably similar for the leds.

The single line off the PSU should be able to easily handle the tiny little 3 amp draw of a 35w bulb.:)

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Cheers Ira - Good to know the PSu can supply the grunt.

I'm talking about HID, High Energy Discharge - essentially a miniature gas vapour system... 23kv to strike then once the arc is running very efficient.

Also they can crank along up to 80-90 lument/watt

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Cheers Ira - Good to know the PSu can supply the grunt.

I'm talking about HID, High Energy Discharge - essentially a miniature gas vapour system... 23kv to strike then once the arc is running very efficient.

Also they can crank along up to 80-90 lument/watt

Ah, got it. :)

BTW, might be worth double checking the voltage of the 12v rail. In a lot of PC power supplies the 12v will sag quite a bit if you don't also load up the 5v rail. Since it sounds like it's working fine I don't think that's a major issue though.:)

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That's another advantage of the HID, the ballast works from 8-35 volts! Good idea about the +5v, I'll see if I can find a 120mm 12 volt fan that will start up at 5v, they still move a fair bit of air but run quieter.

I've put a 50w 12v halogen on my psu that I use for charging batteries. At 5 volts it should only be drawing about 8 watts, so I can live with that little bit of wasted power. Without it though the 12v rail voltage drops to under 10 when you put even as low as a 1 amp load on it. You can even hear the psu's cooling fan slow down, hehehe.:)

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Hmm, I'll break out the multimeter & do some testing... Is there any advantage combining all the black (-ve) wires together and all the red +5v into another and the +12v into another bundle?

OT: Also I've never thought of using the PSU to charge batteries, I have a couple of old UPS batteries that need a charge and my normal charger is dead. How do you hook it up?

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Hmm, I'll break out the multimeter & do some testing... Is there any advantage combining all the black (-ve) wires together and all the red +5v into another and the +12v into another bundle?

If you're drawing a lot of current, probably a little. But since you'll only be drawing a handful of amps I wouldn't bother.

Here's a quick pic of my ghetto conversion.:) I opened it up, desoldered most of the wires inside except the 12v, soldered the power on wire straight to ground and just ran two wires up to the two bolts through the case.

psu.JPG

OT: Also I've never thought of using the PSU to charge batteries, I have a couple of old UPS batteries that need a charge and my normal charger is dead. How do you hook it up?

I use one of these: Charges lead acid, lithium polymer, nicad and nimh. It's getting pretty old now though.

HYP-HP-EOS5IDP-A.jpg

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Aaah so you still need a controller - I was hoping just to tie the lines to the battery and give it a few amps....

Cheers for your help!

If you can adjust the power supply voltage to about 13.5-14 volts and put in a resistor to decrease the current I suppose you might be able to.

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