Wiring & diagram Info

Fluorescent tubes use far less energy than incandescent lamps and fluorescent tubes last a great deal longer as well. Other advantages are diffuse, glare-free lighting and low heat output. For these reasons, fluorescent lighting is the natural choice in commercial and retail buildings, workshops and factories. For battery-powered lighting, fluorescent lights are also the first choice because of their high efficiency. The main drawback with running fluorescent lights from battery power is that an inverter is required to drive the tubes.

Fig.1: two switch-mode circuits are involved here: the DC-DC inverter involving IC1, Q1 & Q2 and the fluoro tube driver which converts high voltage DC to AC via IC3 and Q3 & Q4 in a totem-pole circuit.

Inverter efficiency then becomes the major issue. There are many commercial 12V-operated fluorescent lamps available which use 15W and 20W tubes. However, it is rare to see one which drives them to full brilliance. For example, a typical commercial dual 20W fluorescent lamp operating from 12V draws 980mA or 11.8W. Ignoring losses in the fluorescent tube driver itself, it means that each tube is only supplied with 5.9W of power which is considerably less than their 20W rating. So while the lamps do use 20W tubes, the light output is well below par.

This is a Simple Dome Lamp Dimmer Circuit Diagram. A reading light inside the car greatly assists passengers during night, but often the interior dome lamp is too bright and distracting to the driver. A linear regulator such as a rheostat can be used to control the brightness of the dome lamp but it consumes a lot of power.

Here is a dome lamp dimmer that gives you a fairly linear control over the lamp brightness from low to high intensity while consuming little power. Since it is a pulse-width modulated chopper schema, you can also use it to dim a halogen bulb or control the speed of a mini drill, etc.

Simple Dome Lamp Dimmer Circuit Diagram



In the schema, timer NE555 (IC1) is wired as an astable multivibrator to produce square wave at its output pin 3. The output of timer IC1 charges/discharges capacitor C1 via diodes D1 and D2. Adjust pot meter VR1 to control the RC time constant during the charge-discharge cycle and get the timer output with the desired pulse width. Thus the brightness of lamp B1 can be varied from low to high by adjusting pot meter VR1.

Most cars run only one wire to power the lamp and use the car body for the return current path. Connect ground path of the schema to the car body. Use a suitable heat-sink for the MOSFET to handle the load current.

Why a lamp tester or fuse tester? Testing cables, wires, lamps… belongs to a repair job and sometimes this becomes too cumbersome since one has only two hands and too often, one has to hold the part being tester and the two probes of an ordinary continuity tester all at the same time.

This fuse and lamp tester enables easy testing of lamps and fuses by using the conductivity of the human body. One of the test probes is connected to the part under test while the other probe is hel dby the normal hand.

When the lamp or fuse is working properly, your eyes will glow in the dark! Just kidding :) . When the lamp or fuse is working properly, a small amount of current flows through the hand which is enough to switch the transistors and light the LED.

A number of people have been unable to find the transformer needed for the Black Light project, so I looked around to see if I could find a fluorescent lamp driver that does not require any special components. I finally found one in Electronics Now. Here it is. It uses a normal 120 to 6V stepdown transformer in reverse to step 12V to about 350V to drive a lamp without the need to warm the filaments.

Parts:

C1 100uf 25V Electrolytic Capacitor
C2,C3 0.01uf 25V Ceramic Disc Capacitor
C4 0.01uf 1KV Ceramic Disc Capacitor
R1 1K 1/4W Resistor
R2 2.7K 1/4W Resistor
Q1 IRF510 MOSFET
U1 TLC555 Timer IC
T1 6V 300mA Transformer
LAMP 4W Fluorescent Lamp
MISC Board, Wire, Heatsink For Q1

Notes:

This is a Simple Indicator Lamp Driver Circuit Diagram. A simple solid-state relay schema drives the 10-Vac telephone indicator lamps from logic schemary, while maintaining complete isolation between the 10-V line and the logic schema.