Upgrading Fiber Optic Lamps to LASER Brightness!
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- Опубликовано: 17 ноя 2024
- I like fiber optic lamps but their brightness always disappoints me. They are too dim to really impress me. No matter if it is an old halogen or new LED type.
Time to upgrade my two fiber lamps! Make them brighter - much brighter. Will I succeed or is there a limit I overlooked?
LaserCube 7.5W Ultra donated earlier by www.wickedlase... for this video: • New LASER Power Record...
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Did you miss one of my videos?: / brainiac75
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#fiber #lamp #laser
Protip, if you spraypaint the sides of the fibers black it looks so much better in the dark :)
Yes, I have considered it but not sure how to do it properly without getting the fibers stuck to each other. And covering every tip carefully before painting will be tedious. Will have to look into it - no doubt it will be worth the work if done right! It is the superbright tips hovering in mid-air I am interested in. Thanks for watching!
@@brainiac75true, it takes a lot of effort to do it carefully😅. Have you looked into maybe using something like vantablack once painting them is figured out? It should make the end pop more and not let any light accidentally leak through the fiber
Also might change the critical angle of light inside the fibre and cause the light to be absorbed
@@brainiac75 You could maybe dip them in paint? You could hold both ends and dip the middle section of fibre, leaving a cm at each end unpainted.
@@FriedEgg101they would all stick together like wet hair.
At least to the camera, the star effect is more pronounced with less light. This gives interesting idea whether you can lit the lamp with an LCD screen from smart watch, making the stars dance. It won't be an effective lamp to lit the room, but it can be truly amazing to watch.
You can just dial down the exposure and the colours should come back
Probably want to scale the colours in editing. Drop the lows and increase the highs kind of a fake HDR effect.
@@zyeborm I smoked crack with Jesus once
I've always wanted to do this! These fiber lamps have always been so cool to me ever since I was a child
Me to - and finally got around to doing it. So worth it! Thanks for the early watch.
I loved it so much as a kid. I was so pumped when my mom bought it for me
Stick a lava lamp on top of of show laser. hehe
12:42 I don't know what I was expecting but this is so much more beautiful that I could have ever expected, I can only imagine how it looked in person!
I had completely forgotten that fiber optic lamps even existed! Seeing you 'upgrade' one with lasers, even crudely, looked absolutely beautiful in video as well.
This video quite surprised me, glad to know fiber optic lamps, while still not very bright, aren't completely phased out yet. Great video as usual, can't wait for your next project!
I have a tiny plastic Christmas tree with that technology (used to be a halogen, I changed to a LED lamp), always fun to see stuff like this.
I have often wonder what a fiber lamp display would look like if the fibers were painted flat black somehow with only the tip ends left clear. With your laser setup, now I really want to know!
Something interesting like you showed is how much brighter LED reflector replacement lamps are. I have two kitchen fixtures that accept GU10 50w halogen for 8 bulbs total between both. When replacing with LED I ran into the issue that they're actually way too bright. I had to install dimmer switches on both and remove a few of the LED bulbs. With all LED bulbs in at full brightness it's bright enough to use as a studio but too bright to be comfortable.
Just a weird issue I never expected to run into.
Hi! i love this project. The washed out colours are not cause by 'overwhelming' the colour wheel, it is the low CRI of the LED you are using. It just isnt emitting all colours, nothing like a black body curve.
You could get around this by getting a high CRI MR11, readily available.
Or if you wanted to do something REALLY cool and old-school, we used to use MR11 globes as Halogen Static Discharge globes. They have the same socket as the HSD globes martin used in the early RoboScans (Pro 518, Pro 812 etc), you just need to add a ground wire round the bubble (globe). The advantage of this would be an absolutely perfect black body curve, and much higher efficiency than incandescent.
Part of this will also be because the LED is a diffuse source, and pokes out past the color wheel significantly, letting white light reach the fibers. Masking the lamp off with a dark material would improve it.
It might be something with the spectra of the LED. There wont be full color band emissions from the chip and any spot the color wheel and led have conflict you are going to have issues. That was my guess why the 2700k led looked better
We had these handheld ones as a kid. Once the battery ran out me and my brother had the brilliant idea of connection a cord to it and plug it into the mains to supposedly make it brighter. It did go very bright for about half a second! Fortunaly circuit breakers exist is all I can say!
I miss these things, I got mesmerised as a kid!!
Same as with lavalamps!! They have something so calming ❤
A safer idea might be to use some addressable RGB light neopixel array. and a microcontroller. It probably wouldn't be quite as cool. but probably safer and could still allow for some cool effects. Just an idea.
I've already done that. It's a christmas tree infused with fibers, works the same as the thing in the video. It made horrendous sound after a couple of years, so I removed the halogen lamp and colorwheel and replaced it with 16 tightly packed WS2812B chips (no pcb, no flex material, nothing). Driven by a Teensy, and some code it looks pretty nice.
A few years ago, I did an upgrade from a plain white led fibre lamp to a cluster of seven rainbow led's. As they all have slightly different timings, they will create color patterns on their own. Neopixels didn't really exist back then.
if you wanted to go that way, a 1" high brightness OLED screen would be uber cool
@@mycosys That sounds like quite a good idea.
Brainiac, your channel has aged well. What a fantastic video!! 🎉
Thanks :) I'm afraid most channels that started uploading in 2009 are inactive nowadays :/ But I think my best videos are still to come - stay tuned for much more ;) And thanks for the early watch!
My aunt and uncle had one of those "vintage fiber optic flower lamps" (that was not retro at the time) back in the 80s and it was awesome, was bright as hell. Loved it.
THIS is an absolutely excellent video. Very straightforward how you took the info on the lamp’s sticker, and then shopped for the LED replacement. You’ve left nothing to mystery, and made every consideration. That awesome comment you made about the ‘perfectly straight fiber’ acting as a collimating lens - with the illustrations demonstrating the reflections within the fibers - was the climactic moment. I really like this video and Ill be watching your channel. Thank you very much for making this one!! I love the music too!
i got one of these in a hand held version from DisneyLand in the 90's, and i was obsessed with it. played with it constantly until it broke, and then i took it apart and just messed around with shining different things into the fibers. such a great toy
I didn't even know fibre optic lamps exist but now I want one!
Thank you for this beautiful video
where do you live? the north pole? they have been a thing sinse the 1960s
@@capatainnemo i live in the middle of europe and we were poor. What do you want?
For real me too what a bad reply i also just learnt about them
12:40 Those showcases feel like an optical illusion, they feel like it was filmed with lots of light on a tree :o
Watching the laser fiber lamp on an oled TV was mesmerizing. Truly beautiful.
A long time ago I repurposed the fiber bundle into a ring light for a SLR camera. It redirected the built in flash into a ring around the lens. Worked pretty well.
I would watch a video on how you did that.
@@teriyakipuppy I'll try to make one. I think I still have it around somewhere.
Beautiful! Now waiting for Styropyro to upgrade one.
You should try a small dotstar led matrix! It should fit the small enclosure and maybe produce similar moving color areas as the laser!
1:55 "one must imagine sysiphus happy"
LOL x) Wanted so much to show that sticker just sticking but... Thanks for the early watch!
And never go beyond the thermal or electrical capacity of it's housing
StyroPyro: And I took that personally
Wow these upgraded lamps look Amazing! 😍
Great Video as always! :D
Thanks :o) Must admit it worked out better than I thought. Despite the oversaturation of the color wheel. Maybe because the wheel is not covering all of the lamp... Still room for some improvements - including darkening the 'sides' of the fibers to limit the side emitting spillage.
I'd have put a small (50mm) lens focused onto the fibre bundle and then placed one of those LED disco lights underneath, with it's dome and motor shaft removed (one of those things that you can get that go into a standard light fitting). The older 'disco lights' have red green and blue 1 watt LEDs in a ring, you could swap them out for 1 watt colour changing LEDs, no colour wheel required.
dude that wave pattern at the end goes unbelievably hard
I had an ancient fiber optic christmas tree that ran the same way with an AC12V motor and halogen bulb. I ripped the whole assembly out and replaced it with an Arduino and a little round PCB with 7 addressable RGB lights. Twice as bright at half brightness, runs off a USB cable, and you can change the light patterns whenever you want!
1:35
Interesting how the vintage lamp uses a christmas light for the decorative blinking lights on the outside.
Remember having seen these lamps for sale at the stores back in the early 2000s.
Even though much more expensive and fragile I would love to see such a lamp with actual glass fiber optics... They transmit light much better
It's always a bright idea to have the right amount of fiber.
I love the way how you used that LaserCube! 😂 so cool!
I ha e ben searching everywhere for new lamp that isn't a toy. Only thing I have found are original ones on ebay and the one you upgraded. Great work! 😊
What if I use 3 separate laser pointers with different colors, and replace a color disc with refraction grating film? I think it's will be epic!
Using a show laser seems a bit expensive but one of those cheap 240p led projectors would be a great way to create epic color waves and animations
The laser makes the colours SOOOO rich! Amazing!
I have a black version of the silver battery operated LED fiber optic lamp i found in a second hand shop. It is blue LED only but the optics are black with only the end showing the light. If you could find one, your laser show would look even more intense and the effect I think you are after :) x
Kevin Macleod - Floating Cities continue to bring me nostalgia in your videos.
i dont know what other science channel uses such song. also this looks realllly cool, kinda like ergonomic light.
I can remember about 30 years ago when my parents had 1 of those lamps it had the original glass fiber's which were notorious for the fiber's breaking and getting into feet
It would be interesting to see if replacing the halogen/led bulbs and using a 5V WS2812B pixel ring with an ESP32 development board and WLED would also work. I guess a 3D printed base and 5V mains transformer might also be the way to go.
My thought as well, LEDs can have much purer colors than the old lamp and color filters, and be brighter. That might be enough to upgrade it visually without the issues with lasers.
@@gblargg I am tempted to try some time. I have 100s of strands of fibre optic cable I salvaged from a fibre optic Christmas tree which I pulled apart. I managed to keep the straightest pieces of cable and even though they are only about 13 cm long, I still think they could be used for something interesting. Plus, with WLED (even in combination with Xlights), you can get some pretty neat lighting effects with individually addressable leds.
The effects with the show lazer is amazing it actually looks like internet communications...
If you use Heat Shrink on the fibers you don't have to worry about painting them and it will be bonded with heat, or don't use heat and use it as a sleeve but then you could just use that soft pneumatic air hose.
When I was a kid, I had a magic wand like that, with less fibers, though. It was fun waving that thing around in the dark. I didn't know there are actual lamps like this, only some super expensive designer lamps that borrow the concept, not the style.
Wonder if you could build a PCB for the new-style lamp using a bunch of WS2816B-2020 2x2mm LEDs. Looks like you'd probably be able to fit about 28 LEDs into D=18mm, which gets you 2.5-5W of total power dissipated? Might be able to get much of the zoned color effect of the laser & classic style, with decent color rendering and a very reasonable brightness & price.
Fiber optic lamps nowadays are cheap, about four bucks shipped from the usual Chinese sites, and they use LEDs. They run on 3 AA batteries that last a long time. No more color wheel. That has been replaced by a chip. There is a button that selects the mode you want. Constant red, constant green, constant blue, all three LEDs, and patterns. Also, the fiber optic strands can be decorated with various objects like fake flowers for an interesting effect. Chinese factories have over time innovated fiber optic lamps to the point that you can easily own several of them, and only use them occasionally. I bring one with me camping and it's been soaked in the rain many times, has gotten rusty, and it's right back to where it was with a metal brush and contact cleaner. Your GU4 unit is an antique, even with upgrades.
I got a (reduced priced) battery operated Halloween wall projector candle.
5 different solid coloured LED's shine through a four spot magnified lense
At different angles,
I removed the spinning wheels as it was mainly blackedout with tiny skulls or ghost silhouettes.
Was planning on defusing the light.
Fibre optics will work perfectly.
Don’t let Styropyro discover this!
Gorgeous work!
I am wondering what happens if you put a laser diode based projector underneath the fibers, which in theory do not need to be focused so it may show the image across the spherical dots. If it works, the second step is to figuring out the mathematical projection from sphere to plane so you can create a glowing earth :)
I was gonna suggest painting the fibers but the first comment I see already did suggest that.
Also that 4000K bulb is the perfect white to me. I love it
It came to mind how bright burning magnesium is and thought some shielded outdoor arrangement could be tried using the fibers to transmit the light.
Now I'm just waiting for the collab between you and Styropyro...
I had one of these with deteriorating fibers that would shed little splinter long pieces into my carpet that I would step on as a kid.
Id test any of these to see if the fiber breaks between my fingers before I left it out in my house.
Another improvement could be using longer fibers and give the bundled fibers a turn before exiting the housing. So the source of light and the exit hole aren’t in the same direction. So much less light can escape through the space between the fibers
the ending result was amazing
Well, now I just wanna get one, slap some ws2812b leds in there and see what happens. Could even go so far as to get long "fibers" paint them black so light doesn't leak out the sides, and stick them in further but point them at different leds in groups etc etc etc
Can you make a video about laser safety glasses?
You can explain how to choose the right glasses for each laser and test some of the cheap and fake ones.
One of the questions i have is what should i use if I'm using lasers with different wavelengths at the same time
BEST VIDEO OF THE YEAR SIR - I THANK YOU!!!
I've always wondered, how are show lasers safe? Is it just expected that guests don't look at the lights, do they aim them in a weird way that it won't hit people in the eye, do they move fast enough to not damage eyes? I need to know! :O
a little bit of all of those reasons, but definitely mostly the second one, they obviously do not aim the lasers at the crowds, theyre always either aimed upward to the ceiling or backward to the wall, the only people that could even get in the way of the beam are the ones performing onstage and they obviously know not to. The audience is pretty safe.
It's amazing the heating effect of this laser causing the fibers to dance as their structures expand internally.
It’s the fan causing it.
I thought I was getting styropyro but I got you and I’m not upset about it. Subscribed.
I was unpleasantly surprised to see that the original fiber lamps from the 70s are not sold a lot on second hand websites and they tend to be much more expensive than I hoped.
I was wondering if one of those starlight laser projectors aimed at the underside would work, but I was thinking it was a bit overkill. Then I saw the show laser get pulled out lol
12:54 Watched it on a LG G3 Oled, even with your camera + youtube shitty compression, it still looked amazing
I wonder how it would look to have the entire fiber covered in black so the light can only come out from the tip
If I ever find my childhood fibre optic Christmas tree, I’ll definitely swap the tiny incandescent bulb for an LED!
It's really beautiful at the end.
You definitely like to take things to the extreme. Awesome! 👍😃
Really cool video !
I want a party laser now 😂
That looked awesome!
I need a setup just like that. My wife would absolutely love it..
I wanted to do something similar with optical audio cables and have various lasers illuminating the fibers
absolutely amazing. tempted to do this with my dmx laser
Omg i had the ufo one years ago as a child. Thanks for the memories
I feel like using glass fibers instead of plastic might reduce side emissions and provide crisper points of light at the ends as well.
I actually made something similar some years ago. Try using a heat gun to melt the end of the fibers into a nice round lens
Can you tell us the camera setup? That macro shot of the little info tag was so crisp!
How about a small oled display or something and a array of fibers direct above it would that also give me more ways to animate the fibers or wouldnt it be strong enough?
12:20 there must be fiber optic cables that are pre-wrapped in dark insulating wire, only exposing the ends, right?
Makes me wonder if you can find fiberoptics coated in an opaque coating (preferably something internally reflective)? Then there would only be the light emitting from the ends.
i completely forgot these things existed, buying one asap
for improved color saturation, my idea is using a 5W RGB LED chip with each color channel connected to an Arduino for customizable color patterns. Colored LEDs emit a more saturated color. Would also eliminate the need of a turning color wheel.
The problem is the very low CRI with a colour wheel - that would make it worse as it would only 3 3 specific bands. Whats needed is a high CRI/proper black body curve with all light frequencies.
If your fiber wig is a bit old and yellow, you can clean them up super easy with some water and mild dish soup
Try to paint the beginning of the fiber optics with black to make only the end parts glow brighter ❤❤❤❤
i very much prefer 4000K myself, too. 5000K is just a little bit harsh, and higher is just awful.
so 4000-4300 is a nice middle area where we can still get good efficiency out of Lights while they maintain feeling nice and comfortable.
That was a fun video.
I’d love to own a show laser. Oh it has such nice colors. And send it it to a big bundle of fibers :-)
I really need something like this, its just awesome
Still here, still loving the content as always !
I have a handheld laser that is 7.2 watts that I made years ago. I think I might send it your way.
Hmmmm, what if you could find fibers 3-4 times longer and augment the density by twice or 3? Ideally to keep the half sphere you have to cut the fibers in the right length and make a proper basement BUT with your laser cube it can be amazing ! 😆
I wonder if the higher power LED (4.2w) lamp produces a more "pastel" light, because it's so much brighter than the old halogen lamp, and the lower power (2.5w) LED bulb, and that too much white light is contaminating the column going through the color wheel from the inside of the case. It may just be camera settings, or stray light from behind the camera, but the LEDs that are around the perimeter of the base seem to be lighter when they are off with the higher power LED, than with the lower power LED. In other words, they appear to be light from the back of the LEDs by light inside the case. Maybe you need a tube around the higher power LED bulb to keep stray white light from bouncing around inside the case, and getting to the base of the fibers, and washing out the light above the color wheel.
Also, the bundle of fibers fro the new lamp looks like it's not as full as the old lamp. If it is the same length their effect may be better. The new lamp fibers also seems stiffer, and less pleasing, but that could also be due to the shorter leingth.
Now coat everything but the ends in a completely non-transparent black, so only the tips light up and pump up the power!
Could you do an experimental burn of a single mode fiber, like when the end is damaged/dirty so it blasts off glass and it destroys itself?
A GU bulb with a load of color changing LED's that go out of sequence inserted in it might give that illusion of movement the pro laser did.
I did a fiber optic lamp laser video a few months ago, but not like this.
My fibers were too stiff and inflexible. Maybe too thick as well. And i only used a 100mw green laser because I'm scared to go higher than that. My eyes are f***ed up enough from birth 😮
Giant version, giant version, giant version *chants
This, 👆
Great video, and project.
Thank you.
Hey brainiac, i tried out using an ND8 filter on my 488nm 70mw laser and super glued it to a gun scope lid that has rubber to hold it on the laser and springs open and drilled a hole through the top to allow the laser in and super glued it at an angle so the beam would deflect away from directly inside the laser and stop accidental reflections when closing and openning. So far i have zero melting on this cheap 12$ filter from amazon.
You gave me the idea to try an ND filter and it gets it to like 10mw or something
Slowly put some big glass vases if different shapes over the spinning ones you won't regret it
this project could go further, using a projector under the fibers and even mapping the resultant light into a 3d map. (like the smart 3d xmas tree lights)
Honestly, youtube 4k codec is limited. Even in windowed mode on 1080p screen I only see compression artifacts. Likely amazing in real life.
Now that i have seen "The Light" i will be happy forever.