DIY CFL HL w/DC-DC Inverter

Dang!, I tried all the CFL's I had and none of them would fire up with 60vdc.

I think the key is the ones you are using are designed for a wide input range (100 to 240 vac). The ones I have are all 120vac only. I noticed the same was true for switching power supplies. The wide range ones work better at low voltages.
 
Unfortunately if the CFL is one marked for a specific voltage and frequency, then they are not using a typical switching power supply front-end on it; they are probably using a linear power supply front-end. That means that yes, you could make it work, but you would have to rebuild the ballast inside.

Way cheaper and easier to just go get the other kind of CFL.

FWIW, I took a look around at the ones at various supermarkets and whatnot the last couple of grocery runs I made after starting this, and all of the ones I saw that had the bulb base visible and/or not in a non-openable package were listed as wide-range inputs, so they would probably all work. I haven't seen any of the other kind like you have in a while, but they're probably still being made.

There are also some that use an electronic ballast control chip, though I haven't seen inside them yet. Those chips have some sort of voltage protection in them, that might include UVLO; if so they probably won't work either.


Some new updates; I got the taillight "permanently" installed in place of the old taillight,
CFL TL no brake DSC02085.JPG
CFL TL with brake DSC02086.JPG
and mounted the cups/lens/CFL assembly as the headlight on the front stem in place of the old flat CCFL, but I couldn't find any of the metal cans and whatnot I thought I had and wanted to use for the CFL holder/reflector.

THe "redout" is because there's a white door less than two feet away from the taillight. :)


The lights are now run (as my old ones were) thru the headlight Hi/Lo switch on the lefthand control cluster from the Honda scooter (which also has the turn signals and horn button). Lo turns them off, Hi turns them on. Ground for the system is same as everything else, thru the breaker, so flipping that turns it all off, motor included.
CFL HL frontish DSC02087.JPG
I also managed to blow up the first CFL (the one wired straight to the cap) by somehow connecting it backwards to the power, even though I had tied a knot in the negative wire as always to be sure which way it went. :( It's just the transistors, and I probably have some I can use as replacements around here somewhere. Probably both NPN if like other schematics I've seen. So now I have that plain screw-in setup I was talking about, a little earlier than planned. :roll:

I let the setup run for a couple of hours after finishing the rewiring, and it ran fine the whole time. Just before turning it off, I tested with my "Extech" DMM that has a temperature probe, and got around 135F/60C inside the taillight housing. About 10F cooler inside the headlight housing, which doesn't make sense, since it has the WHOLE CFL inside it, instead of just the glass bulb, plus it's lined with the styrofoam cup and the plastic one outside that (and a bunch of tape).

On the headlight housing, I cut away part of the tape on either side to let light thru in a couple of little rectangles and taped on a pedal reflector on each side to give me amber side markers.
CFL HL front left oblique DSC02084.JPG
CFL HL from behind DSC02088.JPG
Cheap and cheesy, but it is now slightly more visible from the sides. It'll be better and more effective in the more final version once I find those cans, or make something out of sheet metal cut off something else.
 
fechter said:
Dang!, I tried all the CFL's I had and none of them would fire up with 60vdc.

I think the key is the ones you are using are designed for a wide input range (100 to 240 vac). The ones I have are all 120vac only. I noticed the same was true for switching power supplies. The wide range ones work better at low voltages.

try more voltage .. mine fires at 70v+

-steveo
 
Hey everyone,

I've put my cfl on my bike today .. the light is very bright however it has virtually no "throw" any suggestions on an easy good reflector to use?

thanks
-steveo
 
I'm still working on that part; so far the headlight lens (wish I knew what exactly it is from so I could post that) helps, but not a lot.

I need to work up a parabolic reflector that will be both small diameter and will concentrate light from such a large diffuse source.


Even if the CFL headlight fails to work as well as I'd like, the taillight kicks ass. :)

docnjoj said:
Neet projects, amberwolf. And thank you for suggesting a way to use old Averatec parts. I got them too!
Even if you don't use it for this type of project, you can still plug it into your pack and run a small laptop off of it!

(Although I doubt the Averatech laptops themselves, especially the tablets, would survive a bike ride...they're pretty crappily made, physically. These adapters/chargers are the only well-built part of them as far as that goes).
 
nice one amberwolf. i'll have to check if our 240V CFL's work on 60V
 
i took apart my CFL like you did and supplied 60V to the DC side but nothing happened. i followed the bridge rectifyer markings to make sure polarity was correct. when running from 240V mains it showed 280V on the DC side?!?
 
It may take 70V+, as Steveo's did (his is also a 240V CFL).

Is your CFL listed as only a single voltage and frequency, or is it listed as a range? If a range, it should work, with enough input voltage. If only single, it may have a different type of ballast (like Fechter's seem to), which might require the AC component to work at all, rather than having it's own switching transistors.

Since yours has a bridge rectifier (diodes) I suspect that's not the case, and it just hasn't yet got enough voltage to turn it on.

If your pack is only 60V, do you have an old unused laptop adapter around that outputs at least 19VDC? If so, you can see if it runs on your pack voltage, and if it is isolated (no continuity between any AC input wire and any DC output wire). If it is isolated, you can then series it's output with the pack, while the AC input is wired across the pack, to add it's 19V to the pack voltage to get close to 80V, which should turn your CFL on if it's like Steveo's.

The higher DC voltage is normal, AFAIK.
 
For those interested, this is the preliminary version of the instructable. If you see I missed something or any errors, let me know so I can revise it.

http://www.instructables.com/id/CFL-Headlight-and-Taillight-for-Electric-Bicycle/
 
You guys should try using the fluorescent PAR15 or par20, the PAR30 seems a little too large, they all have reflectors. Checked lowes today but they only had them in soft white which is not as bright as cool white or daylight. Perhaps a lighting supply store should have them.

Oh, they also had these new miniature 13watt spiral. Micro mini might fit inside a fog lamp housing. But again only in soft white.
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=15128-3-29730&lpage=none

here's one does not show the lumens or the degrees
http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=21727-75774-017801997743&lpage=none

http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=22419-75774-017801997750&lpage=none
 
these CFL bulbs are 4 times brighter than halogen for the same power. since they don't get hot you could make an incredibly bright bike light that won't melt the housing. my 10w MR16's are are on the edge of melting their plastic housings.
 
I like those CFLs with reflectors--they might make this easy, especially if that front cover comes off to be replaced with a lens (fresnel is my first thought).

If I find one on deep sale somewhere, I might pick it up.

Another possibility is that I have a couple of regular incandescent floodlamp bulbs not in use now that might be disassemblable to embed the CFL in. Hmmm...have to find a way to safely cut the glass front plate off, though.

EDIT: the Sylvania micro-mini is marked as 120V 60Hz, so it probably won't work on this application. :(
 
I like those CFLs with reflectors--they might make this easy, especially if that front cover comes off to be replaced with a lens (fresnel is my first thought).

If I find one on deep sale somewhere, I might pick it up.

Another possibility is that I have a couple of regular incandescent floodlamp bulbs not in use now that might be disassemblable to embed the CFL in. Hmmm...have to find a way to safely cut the glass front plate off, though.

EDIT: the Sylvania micro-mini is marked as 120V 60Hz, so it probably won't work on this application. :(


Yes, but they are all rated at 120v 60hz line voltage.
 
CFLs still working ok, no further action on the focusing of the headlight yet.

Some full-bike side pics from tonite, after a 25-mile shakedown cruise (partial recharge halfway) to test out the new motor mounting plate (after it ripped out the first one from the torque), some battery containment tabs/strips, and a replacement derailer for the one bent up in the cargo-pod/rail collision.

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Voting for the Instructables.com Light Up the Night Contest has started, so if you liked my CFL headlight and taillight idea, the actual instructable is here:
http://www.instructables.com/id/CFL-Headlight-and-Taillight-for-Electric-Bicycle/
with a voting link near the top.
 
My lights were still running fine at the start of this trip, but for some reason the taillight stopped working at some point; I am not sure when. It was simply not working at all when I noticed it, at a stop to let the batteries rest a bit on a strenuous 19 mile trip (which should have been at least three miles shorter, but there were unforseen detours).

I haven't checked it out yet; it's possible that the battery voltage was just too low for it to keep running, but since the headlight still worked, I doubt that is the problem. After the bike finishes charging overnight, I'll see what the problem is.
 
It was just the CFL itself that died. I have to dissect it to see if it was electronics failure or something in the glass bulb. For now it's just replaced with another one. The front is still running fine.
 
I still haven't dissected the dead CFL above. ;) But the replacement is still working.

Now that my pack is 48V (4x SLA) I don't need the laptop adapter to kick start them anymore, but leaving it in there still adds 19V to the pack, making them a little brighter, which is kind of overwhelming on the taillight--it's now definitely brighter than the whole LED brake light bar, and it was probably brighter before. That's pretty bright.

I know that it outshines most of the car taillights I see on the road. ;)
 
i bought it and tested it. i can confirm it does work quite nicely. it can power any 240V CFL probably 110V ones too. they can handle up to 14W according to the ebay listing maybe more. i clocked it at 5W with my watts up meter.
 
That's neat. :)

BTW, this thread confirmed a suspicion I have had for some weeks now: The forum is not sending email notifications of threads I'm subscribed to when new replies are posted, *sometimes*. I can't figure out the pattern for when it doesn't do it.

No, they're not in my spam folders, or elsewhere in the email. I never delete anything, and they're definitely not there, after both a keyword / title search of email, and after manual perusal of all emails within a date range for ones (like this thread) that I know when I should have gotten one but did not.

I even changed which email account I get notifications at, and it did not change the problem (as this thread's problem occurred both before and after that). Both are Gmail accounts, but I do not seem to be missing any emails from anyone else (other than the known-to-be-messed-up Freecycle mailing lists from Yahoo and the new still-in-progress Freecycle.org setup they're working on, which isn't due to Gmail AFAICT, as those problems happen regardless of what provider I have tried).

I know that it won't send a notification if I haven't visited the thread since it's last notification, but *this* thread *I* was the last poster in before monster's 2-21 post, and I did not get a notification for that post nor for the post today, 2-24.

I wouldn't even know about it except I happened to View New Posts a moment ago and this thread was at the top of the list.

Is there some sort of board limit to number of subscribed threads, or is something messed up on them due to the crashes/etc earlier this year?


Note that at first, until this thread, I thought maybe I had just not actually clicked the link in every email notification, and so somewhere along the way I missed replies to some of the threads, which then caused the board to not ever send me new notifications (until I visited the thread again).

Thinking that might be the case, there are a couple of times I've gone to the main page and "marked forums read" for the whole ES board, but even that obviously doesn't fix the problem, since this thread was replied to both before and after I did that the last time, and I didn't get a notification for either one.

So....assuming that there *is* a problem where the board is not sending notifications to me for some threads because it thinks I haven't visited them (because I didn't get a notification I should), how do I reset it to think that I *have* visited it, other than manually going thru my "subscribed threads" list in UCP and opening every one of them?

Because this issue is not associated with this thread, really, I am making a new thread here:
http://www.endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16492&start=0
for figuring out this problem, so anyone reading this here should answer there, instead.
 
these bulbs are pretty awsome as well. they take 3.5W at 12V and are too bright too look directly at. the light feels similar to 10W MR16's but they are more focused because of their reflectors. the LED bulb is a 180 deg arc if you don't use a reflector. the nice thing is there is no volume or weight to them so you could just glue them on to your handle bars and they wouldn't fall off with road vibration. this make mounting them easy.

the CFL bulb is nice too but it would need a reflector or it would shine back in your face.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=150405049021&ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT
 
i just noticed that the CFL bulb was not as bright as it should be when running off the cold cathode 12V inverter. here are some pictures. i put both bulbs in reflector housings to make a fair comparason. the LED bulb fits nicely in an MR16 housing. the LED bulb was brighter than the CFL and used less energy.
 

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