I've got a hotel that I kitbashed from 8 DPM M. T. Arms hotels. There are 144 windows on each of the street sides of the building. I would like to add lighting to the building, but I don't want to just stick a light bulb in it. My plan was to build a grid of "rooms" from strips of styrene and then light some of them. I think that I could even find some plans to build a random circuit so that lights could come on and off over a certain period. I've seen 'wheat head' bulbs advertised and was wondering if one would be enough for each room. I plan to either have tissue paper blinds or dull coat the windows. I'm worried too that the lights might generate to much heat and warp the structure. I don't plan to light every "room" but at least 30 on each side. I don't want to turn it into a fire hazard. I'm sure that some people have tried this so let me know what you guys have learned. Thanks, John Bursi
Sounds like the perfect project for 'Fiber Optics'. Many optic lines from one / or few light sources running to each room. No heat except at light source and that can even be outside of building. Fewer, easier lights to replace at burnout. I've bought the Fiber Optic lines at Hobby Shops and used for engine lights and signals. ...Eddie
Yes there is a "random circuit" PCB setup you can use to turn individual lights on and off with. My preference is the way we made store displays work. You mount fiber optic strands running to any rooms you wish lighted. (Each room is light tight of course) Melt a small bubble on the room end to act as a lens to throw the light. Gather all the receiving ends together and mount them in a row. We drilled a row of holes and glued the fibers in place. A disk of suitable diameter to cover all the ends was made and rotated slowly on a reduction geared motor under the display. One of ours: was a theater marquee with the border lights running around it. The necessary pattern was drawn on drafting vellum and photographed. The negative was then trimmed and mounted on the clear disk. The whole apparatus was mounted in a light box so the disk was running on a shaft horizontally. Cooling air was blown up through holes in the bottom, past the light bulb and vented out through the top edge of the side walls away from the disk. It worked all through the season with no problems, and no one ever figued out how we did it. We have even made some that changed colors too. For the hotel windows, I would suggest having the disk rotate once every thirty minutes. Most people will not stand that long watching for one pattern of lights to repeat. Email me for details if you get serious and need help. [ 11 July 2002, 08:35: Message edited by: watash ]
My preferance for a project like this would be yellow or low intensity white LEDs. They'se cheap, available in mnay colors and intensities, generate no heat if properly wired, last forever, and are easy. You can get them at radio shack , but digikey or mouser would be a better bet.
There's really nothing wrong with using incandescent bulbs, especially if they're fed a voltage less than 80% of their rating -- they will last for a long time --- and the light is already the "right color". Depending on how far back from viewers this structure is, you may want ot provide some detail for your viewers -- one easy way is to mount slides as windows -- preferably slides depicting a room, as tho' you're looking thru the window. Alternatively, some simple "furniture" or drawings on the walls of the "room" could imply the detail. If it's pretty far back from viewers, the frosted windows lighting up will be adequate.. Make sure to separate the rooms with styrene dividers -- light from one room won't then be seen in another. The random switching seems like a good idea...
If you wish to spend a lot of time making the house or hotel unique, and it is far enough away from view, you can cut out silhouetts, or use people figures, mounted on small discs to pass by windows ever so often. Someone will notice the motion, and comment. Make the movement slow enough to look real, but not often to repeat too quickly. One was made that turned on lights starting at the front door, then went from room to room turning lights on and off until the "person" went upstairs to the bedroom, and the light turned off. 15 minutes later it repeated, but by then attention had been drawn to something else.
Grain of wheat bulbs don't put out much heat, so I wouldn't worry about using them. If you reduce the voltage a bit, they'll last pretty much forever, and will cast a yellowish light. There's no need to install a seperate control for each light to get the effect you want, you could control maybe 6 circuits or so to get enough randomization. There are numerous timing circuits out there that would cost very little and would do a great job. You would then be able to individually control the speed of each cicuit, and the random diffeences would make for an interesting effect. Sounds like a good project to me. Mark in Utah
I like fiberoptics. They give you a lot of flexibility. I made a Christmas-tree layout, using a few Christmas bulbs to light the house and some fiberoptics (glued to the bulbs) running out the bottom of the house, under the deck, and up into the Christmas tree. Looked rather good for an hour of fidgeting, and nobody could guess how the little 2" tree was lighted up. I've thought about making a 50's layout which would have fiberoptics for lighting, and also for TV! Get a dim blue LED and flicker it (run it off the speaker connection of a radio to get it to flicker). Route the fiberoptic to a handful or windows, and if any viewers notice that they're all flickering in unison, tell them that there's a special on tonight, on channel 5, about your train layout- all the HO scale railfans in your layout are watching it.
The only problem with fiberoptics is that the light mostly comes out along the axis of the fiber -- even if you melt the end to make it bigger. So for a Christmas tree [or even a TV, but you could just use a "White" LED for that] it's just about perfect, as each fiber is facing out at the end of the branch. But for area illumination, it's not quite so optimal. An overhead fiber/melted-bulb lamp will put some light on the floor below it, but a small 12V (or even smaller 1.5V) will put much more light generally "into" the room. A "table lamp" of fiber would put most of its' light onto the ceiling. Yes the "bulb" would glow, but I'd really like the lamp to "work" - the bulb should be so bright that I can't look at it, like the prototype -- and it's really no problem finding places to hide the wires (actually easier than routing the fibers). Now, for the right thing, a fiber is the best -- I just finished making chandeliers for my church by inserting a 12V bulb into a washer and gluing 12 thick fiber optic strands in a radial pattern around the bulb, melted on the end. When the glue dried, I painted the whole thing black except for the bottom of the bulb and the tips of the fiber. Now the bright bulb lights downward; and a viewer, through the stained glass windows (generally from above), sees six chandeliers with 12 small lights around each one If they get down to eye level, they can see the huge lamps in the middle... but I need those lumens to light-up the stained glass!
