Anyone using the cool lights HMI?

It does not ship until 10/2007. It also says that the ballast can be relocated. There is quite a long thread on here that follows the lights development, and Andrew provides all the detail you could need regarding the light. The Arri's don't use a fan, but at 3990 for the ballast alone...i'll deal with relocating the ballast:)
 
cinebuddy said:
It does not ship until 10/2007. It also says that the ballast can be relocated. There is quite a long thread on here that follows the lights development, and Andrew provides all the detail you could need regarding the light. The Arri's don't use a fan, but at 3990 for the ballast alone...i'll deal with relocating the ballast:)
Click to expand...

I hope the ballast is not nearly as loud as http://yhst-18925554572786.stores.yahoo.net/llv400.html

I bought that ballast and it is so loud that you can hear it on the recording even if you put it in the next room. :Drogar-Sick(DBG):
 
Arrgh...I thought about buying that one...that sucks. Once Richard reads the post i'm sure he'll have an answer for you, he's a straight shooter when it comes to his products, and I know he was concerned about fan noise as it was an issue (slight) with another brand. Damn that sucks that that ballast is so loud.
 
On your 400w, you might consider a motor speed controller circuit to slow the fan down to get it more usable.

http://www.benchtest.com/rack_fan.html

http://store.qkits.com/moreinfo.cfm/FK804

400w is supposed to be about the last wattage that can operate without a fan although I find lots of 400w ballasts that do have a fan--I think these manufacturers are either playing it safe or they know something about their component choices that makes them believe a fan is better. In any case, its strange to not tell customers you have a fan like we are.

If I had this unit, as an individual user/experimenter, I would have already hacked in that speed controller, but of course you void the warranty. Let's keep perspective though. It's a $149 "consumer" (versus for professional use) unit meant for experimentation, DIY video projector and aquarium applications. You shouldn't be experimenting if you're not an experimenter or don't want to become one ;-) DIY isn't for everyone and not everyone will have the temperament for it.

This may come off as a bit harsh but I think some perspective needs to be injected. I have an open approach to design, allowing others to participate, but I think some lock in on what they want to hear and don't evolve or follow the process and compromises that come along the way. The goals of the beginning somehow become "promises" and they feel cheated if these goals meet any difficulties in realization during the project. Hello? This is not Arri with thousands of employees, huge R&D budget, etc. This is a small company that's trying to do what the others won't with our own small budget and ideas.

It's regrettable if some believed they would have an $8000 HMI for $699. Along the way, it slowly became clear to me and I announced that there would be two areas of solution: pro and semi-pro and there would be a price difference. Educating on the differences and who they are good for seems to be the challenge. Sometimes fixtures stay the same across the groups, other times a specialized fixture like a par may be also part of the reason the cost is higher. The differences are primarily at the ballast and ignitor level though and that's where most of the "heavy lifting" occurs.

*** Skip over this part if you're not interested in ballast differences ***

In concept, there really isn't so much to separate the "consumer" level HID ballast (aquarium, grow light use) from the professional HID/HMI one. They're both driving HID/metal halide/HPS solutions and HMI is part of that same family. Thus, they both have similar types of specs at the output. The main differences come along the lines of fan, ignitor or bulb noise generated (or not), flicker (or not), etc.

Why is one noisy and another not? What you find when you open up the consumer one is usually a very simple unit, all on one circuit board and abbreviated in the name of keeping costs down. To compensate for this abbreviation there usually has to be a noisy fan to keep the (crowded together) components cool. Bulb or ignitor noise may come from certain component decisions in the design, cheap bulbs or a really high frequency output of the ballast used to guarantee flicker free performance. Turn off or turn down the fan and you run the risk of lessening the life of the ballast. Its just a certain set of compromises that were made to make it into a $149 solution and there are inconveniences to live with.

Open up the "pro" solution and you usually find many more components over several circuit boards and heat output is more intelligently spread out and handled with large surface area heat sinks and 1 or more whisper fans. They may add other specialized features like the ability to drive a 575w and/or a 1200w unit from the same ballast. DC input instead of AC for battery use in some cases. The ballast chassis will usually be tougher and take more wear and tear for portability sake and carrying around to jobs.

*** Continue here if you skipped that part ***

Is the difference in price between the two solutions justified at $149 to $4000? NO! But there it is all the same and no one has been trying to do much about it until now. After all, who's been honestly trying to compete with these existing solutions which all have an (unspoken) agreement among them that a certain price level is justified due to the specialized and relatively small market. There are however competitive alternatives in this area which I will talk more about in a moment. These won't be $149 solutions nor will they be the $4000. Pro solutions at a more reasonable and believable cost than what we've seen until now.

Anyway, summing up the compromise and reality of these ballasts: Increased size, components and cost or a fan to compensate for the smaller size and lower cost/abbreviated components--that's the choice for now. Thus, given these choices, the options that I think make the most sense to offer in the 575w area are going to be like this:

1). The $699 575w fresnel comes with "semi-pro" ballast, no flicker, super efficient output, small and light, but--fan noise is fairly loud at the moment. With a long cable and in another room you may not be able to hear it. We have asked that manufacturer to lower the noise with motor speed control but its not completed yet. I can't add motor speed control myself as the real mass market solution needs to come from them since it's their circuit board.

Who is this for? Its for the experimenter, the person at home with electronics and circuits, those that are grateful for such advances and take it and run with them rather than finding reasons it won't work, those that are tired of renting but view this in the proper perspective, those that can find places to put the ballast during production, and especially for those that won't complain about it not being $8000 worth of instrument for $699 ;-).

For those that know that know $4000 is too much for a ballast and that $1100 for one is a major advance:

2). A serious, "Pro" 575w/1200w electronic ballast I can sell as with our same 575w HMI fresnel "head" which makes it a $1399 solution. It has a whisper quiet fan and no lamp or ignitor noise. You're getting the ability to drive a 1200w head or a 575w head for $700 more than solution #1 and quieter too; but its also a larger and a bit heavier unit as well at 9.5kg. Yes it's more expensive but lets keep this in perspective. It's still a ton cheaper than the comparable of what's on the market now.

This option only runs on 220v 50 hz today but we are doing the necessary modifications to make it run around the world on any voltage.

Summing up. If you believe you can't deal with any noise at all and you thought a $699 solution would be feature per feature just the same as the $8000 one, then you should continue to do what you do today and not adopt this solution or wait until the totally noiseless solution comes from us or somewhere else.

If a $1399 solution, which is as good as about any pro fixture/ballast combo, out there is palatable then you have your solution in option #2. Those that are grateful for advances will recognize this for what it is. A pro ballast priced like it should be.

Option #1 or the economy, semi-pro solution is for those that can deal with any inconveniences and not feel cheated.
 
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cinebuddy said:
. Damn that sucks that that ballast is so loud.
Click to expand...

Ok perhaps I should be more careful and not be so dramatic. Yes, it does make noise but I don't want anyone to think it is loud like a vacuum cleaner. I would say it is a bit louder than my Dynalight 1200w power packs. I have used that 400w ballast in the next room (shinning lights through a window) and have not noticed it on the recording. I threw some blankets in the room to absorb sound and that helped a great deal.

I am going to buy some regardless of any fan noise because I can use them outside the house to shine through windows.

I think you can plan on me buying many many units :) Sorry Richard, I did not intend to bring any negativity to this discussion. I am sure your products are top notch and you will do extremely well with them.
 
Cool Lights said:
O
1). The $699 575w fresnel comes with "semi-pro" ballast, no flicker, super efficient output, small and light, but--fan noise is fairly loud at the moment. With a long cable and in another room you may not be able to hear it. We have asked that manufacturer to lower the noise with motor speed control but its not completed yet. I can't add motor speed control myself as the real mass market solution needs to come from them since it's their circuit board.
Click to expand...

Interesting read. Two questions, first what kind of cable are you talking about and how long can you get them? Second, For around $1300 you can get the same 575 HMI with the higher end ballast? I'm still thinking that a 1200 that can lamp down to 575 for around $1900 would still be the better deal for me. I can always scrim down:)

Matthew
 
Yes, who else will give it to you straight like this ;-) hehe...

We will do well because there are a lot of people that understand these things will have a place and allow you to do things you couldn't do before because of the high cost (which by the way created a rental market and that's just silly isn't it?). And you'll still have other models available from us too that are a bit more expensive and will compete head to head with the super expensive solutions. One other concept which people should grasp in all this is that you can afford multiple units and backups now too and this was unthinkable before.

As for cables, that's really one of the important things (for sure) in making the low cost solution work. Let's look at what's going on in the circuit to try and understand how the cabling works.

*** Skip if you don't care ***

On the higher wattage metal halide/HMI ballast and lamp combinations it works like this: You have a lamp, ignitor and ballast as the main components. The lower wattage solutions (like my 150w CDM fresnel for instance) also have these components but they are vastly simplified because of the lower wattage and its easier to operate noiseless/fanless with them. If you like 650w fresnels and use them a lot, don't ignore this solution as it can definitely lower your heat output and electricity draw dramatically while still giving you hard light (and daylight colored without gel) too.

Anyway, your high wattage lamp and ignitor need to be close to each other (within 3 feet or less) for reasons of the high voltage pulse (3000v or so) that ignites the lamp will not work over a long distance. A fairly high quality ignitor should be used--one that doesn't have any noise and also one that can stand up to the heat of being in the lamp head as well as the stress of the super high voltage pulses its supposed to be providing. Most of you have never seen an ignitor because they are hidden in the lamp head somewhere usually. Its basically a small and sealed "black box" that you can't get into and when it wears out there is no fixing it, you just have to replace it.

After that, you can have a fairly long run (usually up to 75 feet or so) of cable. The minimum would be 3 conductor cable so we're talking about a multi conductor jacket that's 3/8" to 1/2" in diameter. For convenience there should be connectors on both ends (lamp and ballast) so the cable can be easily replaced if necessary. Or, in the future as we get other improved ballasts, you just replace the ballast with the new one and keep the lamp head as is. (Although in practice it may require an ignitor change in the lamp head too--to match the new ballast but we'll deal with this and how that's accomplished when we come there).

*** End of Skip ***

I think we'll probably just provide the maximum run we can get away with in the 50 to 75 foot range (bundled at no extra charge and eat the costs for now) until we get more resources to lick this fan problem. Once we can get one of the consumer ballast makers to really settle down and find a good compromise then we can get a more interesting and inexpensive compact ballast. Then any fans can be minimized into no fan at all or at least one thats more the whisper type.

But one other area that needs to be talked about is bulbs and what we've discovered there. One of those design goals in the beginning was to use less expensive chinese HMI clone bulbs to keep costs down. The hope was that they would be good enough in life and color rendering. I've stated some of our disappointments on this subject before but I'm going to repeat it here because some may have missed that on all those long design and progress threads.

The reality is that we are catching them early in their development cycle of cloning HMI bulbs. The color rendering is okay. They still have some more work to do to catch up with Osram, Phillips and G.E. in increasing life, as now the bulbs only last in the range of 200 to 500 hours whereas an Osram may be 500 to 1000 depending upon the model.

Also some of these bulbs have an odd "humming" problem at the high frequencies we drive them at to avoid flicker. No such problem exists with a magnetic ballast but we decided we won't use magnetic for reasons of weight and flicker a while back. The Osram and name brands don't have such a humming problem. It has something to do with a resonance of the metal parts inside the bulb vibrating against the glass of the bulb. They'll lick it in the future I'm sure, but it's not going to happen now.

You see, as a small company we simply can't sell or bundle that Chinese 575w/1200w bulb solution and put a guarantee on it. It's just not totally finished yet. If we bundled that with our fixture it would be like the ink jet manufacturers and their "half cartridge of ink" they bundle with their printers now. You just know when you buy one of those that you'll be buying a new cartridge very soon. There isn't a guarantee on that tank of ink really either.

It's better if people buy their own real HMI bulb solution on the 575w and above. We can provide for the 150w because those bulbs seem to be more robust and what we expect.

In the future, as our budget increases and we can afford more inventory we will be able to buy the Osram bulbs in quantity and get the cost down and pass that on to our customers. But it would take a purchase of 500 bulbs to be able to do it and we're doing so much now that we're stretched to our limits already. Or one of the Chinese companies needs to really get it right so we can bundle and sell their more affordable solution.

Patience, patience, patience. This is a process (for lack of a better term) and it will take a while for it to normalize. We're all on the bleeding edge here and now.
 
Macville said:
Interesting read. Two questions, first what kind of cable are you talking about and how long can you get them? Second, For around $1300 you can get the same 575 HMI with the higher end ballast? I'm still thinking that a 1200 that can lamp down to 575 for around $1900 would still be the better deal for me. I can always scrim down:)

Matthew
Click to expand...

I answered in more detail above about the cabling but to answer your question more specifically lets talk about lamping down.

Yes it can work but there is one practical consideration about that. That's the distance from the bulb base to the bulb center point (also known as LCL distance). There is a bit of difference in the 575w and 1200w in this distance so that the center of one may be in the exact center of the fresnel mirror but the other one won't be. The effect would be that the 1200w fixture would be optimized for the 1200w bulb and the 575w bulb would fit in there physically but the bulb center not exactly in the center of the mirror so it wouldn't be quite as efficient in light output as it could be. A method for "cranking" the socket up would have to be devised to make this completely an optimum solution. Sort of like a vertical focusing mechanism. I doubt we can get that in there right now so you'd just have to live with the output being a bit less optimum than it would be if it was adjusted specifically for the 575w.
 
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