DIY Project Goal: Build an enviable HID flashlight/spotlight before the end decade.

Step one was to place an order on eBay for a 35W HID bulb and ballast assembly manufactured as a replacement bulb for an existing finished HID torch/spotlight product. Step two: ask myself where on earth and I going to find out all the 'secrets' about HIDs, their ballasts, lithium-battery protection circuits, adjustable focus lenses/and orreflectors, and how and what to test for and find what electrical parameters needing to be properly managed before even attempting the also untrained for task of machining a suitable housing to compatibly bring it all together in a completed precision lighting instrument.

Now I have a gzillion other more important things to do with my time, so this is going to be a slow going hobby of mine for several months to come. With generous, talented, knowledgeable tolerant and patient input and/or dialogue with interested others here, I might just might be able to develop a comprehensive plan (as in blueprint) negating the need for the more expensive, time consuming and inefficient trial-and-error approach.

But first (and until I receive my HID bulb+ballast delivery), I'm going to bed to sleep now; perhaps to dream; a dream perhaps in which I'm luxuriating in a desert oasis and finding myself being doted on by exotically beautiful women, all resulting from my having failing to conceal this one self-made flashlight/spotlight/torch that happens outshine all the other lamps in the realm. I just ask that nobody wake me sooner in the morning than necessary, please.

BH

Good luck with your project, there is a wealth of information and people on here to help .

Here are a couple of snapshots of the HID bulb & ballast I intend to use. (Sorry about the poor picture quality.) I have a question, in case I find the outer glass envelope poses any difficulty: How can I tell whether this is, or is not, one of those HID bulbs I have read about on Wikipedia where it is claimed, most HIDs are made to automatically turn off if/when the outer envelope becomes cracked or broken? Also, when powering this thing up once it's all assembled in a flashlight case, I'll likely want to use lithium rechargeables. As I believe there is no lithium-ion battery protection-board provided in this lamp (according to the seller), what I might I need to do to make sure that such battery vulnerabilities are automatically circumvented thus preventing resulting damage due to improper drain, charge, heat, etc. conditions, etc.? Look for Lithiu-Ion rechargeables advertized as having such a protection circuitry already included within them. Or is this something I need not worry about as long as I'm careful to never let the batteries run down too low or too close to empty, or at full power for more than a few seconds to minutes?

Thanks

Sorry the image didn't show up in the previous post. Trying again here.

See Rule #3 Do not Hot Link images. Please host on an image site, Imageshack or similar and repost – Thanks Norm

There, now that the picture is up, I can ask for some help/advice, as I can't seem to get the bulb to power up for me.

First of all the vendor says this bulb requires 12V. So I've connected the positive and negative contacts to a 12V capable DC power supply (actually my car battery charger), and the bulb just flickers and won't light up. (Yes, I was careful not to mix up the polarity.)

Now I have three amperage settings on my power supply (car battery charger) which are 2A, 12A and 75A. I've tried all three settings, and yet the bulb behaves the same regardless. I've put a voltmeter on my power supply to test the voltages at each of these amperage settings and found these to be 10.09v, 11.95v and 16.47v respectively. The last two settings meet the bulb's stated required Starting Voltage while certainly being able to supply more than sufficient amperage*.

So what gives here? Is it that this bulb is just faulty? Should I be feeding something into the "Regulating power" contact? Or is the fact that this bulb comes complete with the ballast circuit not enough; I mean, do such HID bulb modules such as this also require an external driver circuit of some kind? (...which, come to think of it, might explain what to do with the "Regulating power" contact)

Thanks in advance,
couver52

PS: * I have no uncertainty that this car battery charger is performing properly with regard to amperage. When accidentally, my temporary power supply probes -one a small precision screwdriver- ever so briefly touched each other while on the 75A setting, the screwdriver bit, where contact was made, was so damaged by the amount of heat sustained at the spot that it's no longer useable as a screwdriver.

Wow! I posted this three years ago and not a whimper of a reply. That said, for anyone who may come across this in future, I've since discovered the reason why my 12 volt battery charger failed to power up the light. Car battery chargers provide a very poor quality current. Naturally, like most people I just assumed if you have a device of any kind that puts out direct current, well then you get a continuous voltage current in one direction. This is true of batteries. But it's not true of anything that converts AC to DC. My battery charger is a low quality inverter. As such, all it does is allow part of the AC current going one way, and blocks off the part of AC current going the other way. The result is a pulsed or start-and-stop DC current. All inverters, even sophisticated high efficiency inverters produce a pulsed DC current. A really good inverter may produce what may be close enough to a smooth continuous current. Still, it doesn't actually reproduce the smoothly continuous current that a battery delivers. But I degress, as an automotive battery charger is the bottom of the barrel in this respect, producing a current so choppy and intermittent that my HID lamp and its ballast simply could not be powered by it. If I had only used a fully charged automotive (or a dry cell equivalent) instead, then I probably would have had no problem starting this lamp.

couver52 said:

Wow! I posted this three years ago and not a whimper of a reply. That said, for anyone who may come across this in future, I've since discovered the reason why my 12 volt battery charger failed to power up the light. Car battery chargers provide a very poor quality current. Naturally, like most people I just assumed if you have a device of any kind that puts out direct current, well then you get a continuous voltage current in one direction. This is true of batteries. But it's not true of anything that converts AC to DC. My battery charger is a low quality inverter. As such, all it does is allow part of the AC current going one way, and blocks off the part of AC current going the other way. The result is a pulsed or start-and-stop DC current. All inverters, even sophisticated high efficiency inverters produce a pulsed DC current. A really good inverter may produce what may be close enough to a smooth continuous current. Still, it doesn't actually reproduce the smoothly continuous current that a battery delivers. But I degress, as an automotive battery charger is the bottom of the barrel in this respect, producing a current so choppy and intermittent that my HID lamp and its ballast simply could not be powered by it. If I had only used a fully charged automotive (or a dry cell equivalent) instead, then I probably would have had no problem starting this lamp.

Click to expand...

Also can use decent sized electrolytic capacitors on the charger DC output to help smooth it out some. This might have also worked for you.

XeRay said:

Also can use decent sized electrolytic capacitors on the charger DC output to help smooth it out some. This might have also worked for you.

Click to expand...

Yes, excellent suggestion.