Tuesday, November 17, 2020

Insert lights replaced with... fiber optic?

So one idea I've had is, could you simply have a circuit board with a bunch of bright LED's, and then feed those lights to each insert via a fiber optic?  Well, I decided to buy a short sample of light transmitting fiber optic (do not buy network fiber optic) and see.  Decided to start with 3mm diameter, but it could probably easily be 2mm.  It came with a small 5mm LED that was about the same brightness as the LED flash on my cellphone.  I decided to recut each end, and then flash polish each end so it was nice and clear.  I gotta say it's pretty darn close to a bulb sitting in a socket behind the insert.

So you're probably saying to yourself...

Well.. I've seen underneath a lot of homebrews, and the biggest contributor to a rat's nest is the wiring for the lighting.  Now granted this simply takes 2 wires and replaces it with a single glass cable, but half is good.  So what about cost comparison?

Well assuming you were to JUST buy the same LED bulb, bayonet socket, and simply have a row in a section and then feed the fiber optic over to each insert (you would also probably want to 3d print some sort of holder to keep it offset).  Just comparing fiber optic to a pair of 22AWG wires:

22AWG wire, 1000 feet red, 1000 feet black ($80 each)

$160 / 1000 feet = 16 cents per foot

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2mm fiber optic, 350 meters (or 1080 feet) = $90

8 cents per foot


So just in the wiring alone, you'll end up paying about 1/2 the cost.  Now if you were to also replace the $1.50 PROC RGB bulb PCB with a through-hole RGB soldered to a perf board (say a neo-pixel), you'd be only paying 50 cents each (plus a little bit for the perfboard).

https://www.adafruit.com/product/2659

That's also adafruit prices, you could obviously find them for at least half that cost on aliexpress.

Another benefit: If an LED goes out, they are all in a single section.  Just go to the one not working and replace it.. not brush your way through a nest of wires, unscrew the bayonet socket (and hope you don't drop the screw).

One more benefit: You don't have to worry about crosstalk of 48v coils vs 5v lighting.  You are literally carrying the light through a tube, not power.



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