Cheap and dirty HID

[hippie]

I'm currently making 12 small lights and want to find some cheap and dirty HID lamps to use in them.

Currently I'm looking at http://cgi.ebay.com.au/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220667609962 and a bunch of cheap 12v PSU's.

Does anyone know if these actually produce much light for power input? Are there any better options? I'm looking for something small and cheap, each light will about 10cm across, I'm making my own parabolas to reflect it into a tight beam.

Any help muchly appreciated

 

[bitslice]

aren't they just halogen lights?
HID's have a spark gap

ebay sellers are a tad loose with their descriptions sometimes

 

[RyanA]

Yep, an HID would need a ballast. That's just a halogen with blue tint.

 

[Fichtenelch]

These are just fake xenon bulbs. filled with gas, but no real gas discharge tubes.
No xenon without the necessary ballast to provide the ignition voltage. 12V is not enough for that.

 

[hippie]

The first picture has a spark gap, the second is a halogen, was going to ask before I bought but the first photo seems right.

I was assuming (and it looks like I made an *** of myself) that these smaller xenons had a similar ignition to larger ones, ~32kvac ignition spark, ~160vac secondary voltage until it warms up all along with ~32vdc to run it.

I had thought on the small ones the 32vdc was replaced with 12v and the ballast just providing the high voltage and warm up voltage. Looks like I'm wrong???

I have some experience messing around with making larger xenon ignitions so figured I could do the same here.

None the less dirty cheap xenon HIDs would be the best option? Assuming I can make the ballast. Any other easier options? As I said I'm looking for something small, the brighter the better and of course cheap.

 

[jason 77]

"Hippie" as stated above the ebay item you linked to is just a standard set of halogen bulbs with a blue tint on them, NOT a HID bulb. They do make small HID bulbs, I believe in the form factor of H3C.
http://www.manyadeal.com/images/bulbs.jpg
but I don't think they will be cheap.

Are these going to be flashlights?

 

[Fichtenelch]

These ballasts are usually also not that cheap, chinese ones should be around 60-80$ for a pair of 2.

 

[DJack]

Yup, you can see the filament in the pics and on the boxes it says halogen. I don't know what kind of bulb you are looking for, but just search on Google "hid kit" and you will find plenty. One of the first results was for a pair of auto hids for $36. Ballast included. You wont find anything in the $1.39 range though.