Had a college student visit me today. He was looking for a way to make a fire fly like effect for one of his sculptures. Wanted to use a 60w lamp and on a 10sec dimmer curve chase, have the lamp dim from zero to full than back down without the need for various dimmers and light boards doing so.
Our electronics department could of course make a circuit board that could do this for $$$, he could also by way of circuitry if enough training in it. Discussed a slide dimmer with oval link and gear attached to a small motor, discussed the in-series fluorescent starter effect for a 60w lamp with a FS-25 fluorescent starter which should be a slow flicker and long warm up as option C as it were, discussed an option B of E-Bay or new for small theater type American DJ like dimmers and light boards to control it and a potential need to up the wattage to 75 or have a ghost load. Discussed the kinds of controllers that are used for say a tornado warning horn that could but not easy enough be made function for this purpose, and various other options or ideas.
As option A above the small dimmers/controller and fluorescent starter plus us making him something, I gave him a prototype Osram S-14 changing color LED lamp that had a long cross over fade between colors to attack with a Dremmel tool. Open it up, remove / cut into the lamps he doesn't want to be working and hope it still works with the colors he wants to be using after he removes the ones he don't want. Should still work though the cross fade/seeming dimming won't be as smooth without the lamps themselves doing it. The lamps are not dimming persay they are just adding more of the next color in cross fading.
How would the forum go about this task without getting heavily into circuitry or dimmers yet easy to do? From my quick search, there is no timer that dims also and a stepped timer would not work with the same effect.
Our electronics department could of course make a circuit board that could do this for $$$, he could also by way of circuitry if enough training in it. Discussed a slide dimmer with oval link and gear attached to a small motor, discussed the in-series fluorescent starter effect for a 60w lamp with a FS-25 fluorescent starter which should be a slow flicker and long warm up as option C as it were, discussed an option B of E-Bay or new for small theater type American DJ like dimmers and light boards to control it and a potential need to up the wattage to 75 or have a ghost load. Discussed the kinds of controllers that are used for say a tornado warning horn that could but not easy enough be made function for this purpose, and various other options or ideas.
As option A above the small dimmers/controller and fluorescent starter plus us making him something, I gave him a prototype Osram S-14 changing color LED lamp that had a long cross over fade between colors to attack with a Dremmel tool. Open it up, remove / cut into the lamps he doesn't want to be working and hope it still works with the colors he wants to be using after he removes the ones he don't want. Should still work though the cross fade/seeming dimming won't be as smooth without the lamps themselves doing it. The lamps are not dimming persay they are just adding more of the next color in cross fading.
How would the forum go about this task without getting heavily into circuitry or dimmers yet easy to do? From my quick search, there is no timer that dims also and a stepped timer would not work with the same effect.
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