Wondering about installing lights for sewing room? Is your craft room lighting in need of an upgrade? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows how to upgrade sewing room lights for a massive improvement. Adding several LED lights in room improved the overall usefulness of the sewing space and for craft work.
Check out Diane's channel Delightful Light: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqeC5EK8VMuFCK5t268H4eA/videos
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, you may subscribe here.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing"
Incidental: "Mining by Moonlight," "Motivator," "Rocket," "Chipper"
Want more in-depth design information about the sequential turn signals circuit presented in a previous video? In this episode of House of Hacks, Harley shows a high-level diagram and a simple voltage conditioning circuit to convert a switched 12 volt on/off signal to a 5 volt logic signal. This is a follow-up to a question asked in a comment on this DIY sequential turn signal circuit video.
Here at House of Hacks we do tutorials, project overviews, tool reviews and more related to making things around the home and shop. Generally this involves wood and metal working, electronics, photography and other similar things. If this sounds interesting to you, go subscribe and click the bell to get notifications.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0 by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com.
Intro/Exit: Hot Swing
Transcript
A couple days ago on this sequential turn signal video, JTinnon asked if I could share the schematics for this circuit.
I put this together a couple decades ago and honestly cannot remember if I made a schematic for it or not.
I looked in the couple places where thought I might have them stashed and couldn’t find any so I drew out some block diagrams.
I’ll show these right now at the House of
Hacks.
[Intro]
Hi! Harley here.
If you’re interested in workshop projects made out of things like wood, metal and electronics, consider subscribing so you won’t miss a
thing.
In the previous video JTinnon commented on, I discussed the philosophy of design for this project and displayed a couple partial diagrams, but I never showed the whole thing.
In this video, I’ll show the complete, high-level diagram.
And everything I show today can be downloaded from GitHub at the link below.
There are also links to other resources that might be helpful in understanding this circuit.
First, here’s a block drawing of all the functional pieces.
I go into this in more detail in the earlier video, but again in brief, there’s a pulse generator whose output is fed into the input of a binary counter.
The pulse generator can be any circuit producing regular pulses that can be detected by the input of the binary counter.
In my case I used a 555 timer in an astable multivibrator configuration with a variable resistor in order to be able to control the speed.
Two sequential bits on the output of the binary counter are fed in to the least significant bits of the address lines on the ROM.
The output from switches indicating right, left and brake are fed into the inputs on address bits 2, 3 and 4 of the ROM.
The 12v signals coming from the switches are conditioned through some voltage shifters.
Address bits 5, 6 and 7 are unused and tied to ground.
The data outputs from the ROM are fed into the inputs of a buffer chip that is subsequently used to drive display circuitry.
Next, let’s look at the schematic for the voltage shifter since it’s a little bit unique.
The issue is the signal coming from the switches is either 12 volts or nothing.
12 volts is too high for the 5 volt logic circuits.
And the logic gates can't cope with the floating, non-connected switch when it's turned off.
So the 12 volt on/off signal needs to be converted to 5 volts that is either a voltage or ground.
To do this, I used a 5 volt zener diode in a voltage regulator configuration.
This changes the 12 volts to 5 volts.
Next I put in a resistor to ground in parallel.
This ensures that when there’s no connection, the signal goes to ground instead of floating at an indeterminate value.
The voltage for all the logic circuits comes from a 7805-based regulator.
There are lots of schematics for this on the web.
I've left links in the resources section below.
But if I were doing this again, I’d probably use a buck converter for better efficiency.
And here’s how I programmed the memory.
Given there are 5 address lines being used, that means there are 32 memory locations that need to be programmed.
Since the bottom two address bits vary by time from 0 to 3 and address lines 2, 3 and 4 represent switch states that can be from 0 to 7, the whole thing can be thought of as 8 groups of 4.
Each group represents one combination of switch settings and the 4 items in that group represent what lights are on at four points in time.
I hope that gives some additional insight into this circuit design.
I’m thinking about doing a similar circuit that uses an Arduino.
Leave a comment below if this is something you’d be interested in.
Thanks for joining me on this creative journey that we’re both on.
Want to see how to convert fluorescent tubes to LEDs while bypassing the ballast? In a previous video, Harley showed a very easy but expensive way to convert fluorescent tubes to LED tubes. In this video, Harley shows a more involved, but typically less expensive, way to convert a fluorescent fixture to use LEDs involving a ballast bypass.
Ballast bypass, also called direct wired, involves removing the ballast and using LED tubes that run off of line voltage rather than the high-voltage from the ballast. Typically these bulbs are less expensive because they don’t have to deal with the higher voltage used by fluorescent tubes. This video gives instructions for how to wire the fixture to use these bulbs and provides a wiring diagram.
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Incidental: "Acid Trumpet" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks, we're going to go from this to this.
[Intro]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers.
Harley here.
In a previous video, I explained how to convert 8' long fluorescent fixtures from fluorescent tubes to LED lights in a very quick and easy way.
However, this way was pretty expensive. It involved just getting some ready-made 8' LED lights and those things are really pricey. For some reason, the 8' LED tube replacements are a whole lot more expensive than 2 4' LED replacement tubes. The 8' tube replacement are $60 each whereas I picked up a 4 pack of 4' ones for $24. I have no idea why. And they've been this way for quite a while. I picked up two pair last year I think it was, and they were $60 and I just picked up two pair yesterday and they're still $60. Same price. It hasn't moved at all. And it's pretty much the same price whether you buy it online or retail like I did. There's usually a few dollars off buying online but of course you have shipping and handling costs added to it so it ends up being a wash.
It's a real quick way to do it because you don't need to replace ballast, you don't need to rewire anything, you just plug them in in replacement of the existing bulbs. So, it's really quick. It's more expensive getting the bulbs that are designed for ballast.
However, in the 4' market you can buy tubes that work either with ballast or without ballast. And I have a fixture that needs some work on it. The ballast is making noise and the tubes are flickering and so I wanted to replace them with LEDs.
But because the ballast is making noise, I want to do a ballast bypass and remove the ballast altogether. And so I'm going to be demonstrating that in today's video. It is a little bit more work because you have to take the ballast out and rewire things a little bit, but it's not a whole lot more work and you do remove one more component that could possibly fail on you. So let's get started.
First remove the old bulbs.
It'd probably be a good idea to turn off the power before doing this.
Yeah, do as I say, not as I do.
Now take the fixture down. This will vary depending on how it's installed.
In my case, it's just sitting between the joists on some 2x4s.
Next disconnect the mains power.
Be sure to have the power turned off.
You don't want to be working with live power at this point.
On the bench, the fixture needs to be opened up.
This will vary depending on the type of lamp you have.
In my case, it's just a matter of removing two nuts.
And then the case just opens up.
Here we see where the sockets are connected to the ballast.
Since we're removing the ballast, all these connectors get taken apart.
We need to do this on both sides of the fixture.
And we need to remove the mains wire from the ballast input.
Once all the electrial connections are separated, we can physically remove the ballast.
In this case, there are two screws with nuts on them.
Other designs may have a single sheet metal screw on one side and a slot on the other.
Now we need a short piece of wire to run from the center where the mains are connected to one end of the fixture.
I'm using some scrap 14/2 TPS cable I had in the parts bin.
If you have to buy some, 3 feet should be plenty.
Now I prepare all the ends by stripping off about 3/4" of insulation from each wire and twisting the strands so they don't fray as easily.
I also strip the insulation from the 14/2 cable.
Now comes the most technical part of this project.
Here we see each socket has two wires coming out of it.
On one end of the fixture, we want to connect one wire from each socket to the white wire and the other one to the black wire.
It's probably easiest to see this in a pictoral diagram.
Hit pause on the video if you need to study this.
Because I have four sockets on this fixture, I used some pigtails to keep from having a huge number of wires all in one wire nut.
When it's all put together, it looks like this.
The sockets on the other end of the fixture don't need any connection.
I just put wire nuts over the ends of the wires to keep them from potentially shorting anything out.
And then zip tied them together to keep them neat and tidy.
Finally I stripped the insulation back from the other end of the 14/2 cable.
We can see here, I'm not using the copper ground from the new cable, but the existing ground that goes to the fixture.
And now it's a matter of reassembling the fixture.
And reconnecting the mains.
Again, make sure the power is off before doing this!
Reinstall the fixture.
In my case it's just a matter of dropping it back into place between the joists.
Finally, install the bulbs.
These particular bulbs have only one end that connects to the sockets with power, so if they don't work the first time, turn the bulbs around end for end.
Turn on the power and enjoy your new lights!
So give me a thumbs up if you found that helpful. I really appreciate it.
And I really thank you for joining me on this continuing creative journey that we're on.
Fluorescent tubes flicker because of their inherent design. LED lights may or may not flicker depending on how well their power supply is designed. How do you measure the amount of flicker? In this episode, we quantify the flicker in the fluorescent tubes and after an LED light conversion.
How to easily convert fluorescent tubes to LEDs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YROz2AekkA
Electronupdate video: Measuring Light Bulb Flicker with Nothing More Than a Cell Phone: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qym5-126BDY
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
After seeing last week's episode about converting fluorescent lights to LEDs, David Terry asked "do they flicker the same way fluorescent tubes do?” I wasn’t sure, so let's measure and find out, today at the House of Hacks.
[Music]
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
Fluorescent tubes are powered by AC current and flicker based on the speed of the power cycles. Here in the United States, our power cycles at 60 hertz. This means the hot lead varies between positive voltage and negative voltage 60 times a second. The tubes don’t really care about positive or negative values, just the absolute value and so will flicker at twice that rate, or 120 times a second.
This is too fast to bother most people, but a non-trivial segment of the population are affected by this and have problems working under fluorescent lights. The flicker can also cause artifacts when shooting video at certain frame rates. And, as the bulbs age, they may not go on and off at every cycle, causing the flicker to slow down and become more noticeable.
To measure the flicker, I've got this simple setup. I have just a solar cell and the oscilloscope. The flicker in the lights will cause the output of the solar cell to oscillate in sync and the scope allows us to see that variation. At 120 times a second, we expect to see each cycle to be around 8 milliseconds so I have the scope set to 10 ms per division.
Now I'm going to connect the scope to the scope to the solar panel. And we’ll see what we have here… and that's exactly what we expect to see; each cycle is about 8 milliseconds.
So now I'll go over into the room other room and check it out with the LEDs.
I still have exactly the same setup as I had before. Let’s connect the scope to the solar panel and see what we get.
Ah, a straight line. So, to answer David’s question: no, there is no flicker with these LEDs. Thanks David for asking the question.
And coincidentally, a couple days ago an electronics channel I subscribe to, electronupdate, uploaded a video showing how you can use a cell phone to detect this flicker. I thought you might find that interesting.
If this is your first time here at House of Hacks: Welcome, I’m glad you’re here. We’d love to have you subscribe. Through this channel I hope to inspire, educate and inform makers in their creative endeavors. Usually this involves various physical media like wood, metal, electronics, photographs and other similar types of materials. If this sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe and I’ll see you again in the next video.
Thanks for joining me on our creative journey. Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!
There are several ways to convert a fluorescent tube fixture to using LED lights. In this episode, Harley shows the fastest, easiest, but most expensive option to retrofit T8 and T12 fluorescent lights to LEDs. At the end, measurements are taken of the light output to see the effect of the new lights.
How to count in binary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCFcuVHB1sI
Music under Creative Commons License By Attribution 3.0.
Intro/Exit: "Hot Swing" by Kevin MacLeod at http://incompetech.com
Transcript
Today at the House of Hacks we’re going to go from this to this. Oh, yeah!
Hi Makers, Builders and Do-it-yourselfers. Harley here.
The general illumination in my shop is all fluorescent lights and for quite some time now I’ve been wanting to upgrade them to LEDs. Recently I’ve had two bulbs that were kind of on the way of going out and today they just didn’t come on at all. So I went down to the home store and decided to bite the bullet and convert a couple of my fixtures, two of the fixtures, a total of four bulbs, from fluorescent to LED.
In all my investigation I’ve found that there are kind of three principal ways of doing this conversion: the first is very quick, very easy and expensive, the second is less expensive and also a little bit more work, and the third way is the most amount of work but also the least expensive. So, today, because of time pressure, I decided to go, on these, with the first option of the most expensive but the fastest and easiest to do.
For cost comparison, these bulbs are $60 apiece and I have four bulbs to replace. So that means the total cost on this conversion today was $240. Now to put it in perspective, I think I paid $200 for the whole fixtures originally, including fluorescent tubes. So it is quite a bit more expensive but now I have LED lighting with all the benefits thereof.
Today I want to look at what it takes to install them and what the difference is in the light output. So let’s get to it.
These come in four foot long packages. There’s two tubes that snap together to make an eight foot section. They’re made by Feit Electric, Feit electric, I don’t know how you really pronounce that. They replace both T8 and T12 bulbs and the advantage of these is they work off the ballast voltages so you have to do is take out the old bulb and replace it with the new one after you put everything together and unpackaged it.
It says it’s rated for up to 50,000 hours of life. We’ll see how that actually works itself out. It uses 44 watts and has a color temperature of 4100 Kelvin. So it’s sort of in the middle of the color temperature range.
Here we have one set of ends as packed. A cap is over one piece for shipping to cover the open middle where the two pieces will be joined together. It can be removed and discarded. And the other end contains the power pin that will connect to the light fixture.
Here’s the other set of ends. One end has a clear plastic piece over it that contains a magnet. This will stabilize the center of the light. Remove it for now and set it aside. This is the other pin that will connect to the light fixture. The other piece has a connector with two spring loaded pins. Pull this out until the pin locks into place.
Now slide the clear plastic support over the end without the connector but don’t cover the small hole for the locking pin. Slide the two pieces together until the pin locks into place. Finally slide the plastic piece over the joint to help support the connection.
We can see half the tube is aluminum extrusion to provide support and heat dissipation. The other half has a curved frosted diffuser.
Installation is just like a normal fluorescent tube. Once both ends are in place, push the middle up so the magnet sticks to the fixture for support.
And that’s really all there is to it. Snap the two pieces together, take out the old bulbs and put in the new bulbs. Short. Sweet. Simple.
I really like it. It seems to work out really well.
Now let’s go take a look at what the actual light output is.
The measurement of tubes is on the left and the LEDs on the right. There is 1 EV difference between the two. In photographic terms this is one stop, or twice the amount of light out of the LEDs.
So you can see, the light output from these is quite a bit more. It’ll be nice having consistent color temperature across all my bulbs too. Working in the shop should be much more pleasant for me.
If this is your first time here: Welcome! We're glad you’re here. All my videos have to do with maker related types of topics: woodworking, metal working, shop projects in general, kind of like this. If that kind of thing sounds interesting to you, go ahead and subscribe. We’d love to see you again in the next video.
Now, go make something. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just have fun!
