A look inside a common retro disco light, and how it uses a single lamp to generate lots of sharp beams of light that can either be static as in this unit, or rotate to the beat.
Although very inefficient, these simple lights put out lots of very sharp beams of light, so they dominated the cheaper end of the disco market for decades.
I was a bit under the weather while recording this video, so I may sound a bit hoarse.
I meant to say "Safety Extra Low Voltage Equivalent" (SELV-equiv) when I described the electronic halogen transformer. (Also known as Separated Extra Low Voltage Equivalent.)
The simplest way to understand the operation of this effect is to imagine that from various positions in the room, looking through the lens will show a reflection of the lamp's filament in one of the many small mirrors. (Don't actually look directly into high intensity light beams though.)
The reference to the capacitor stopping the power supply from blowing up is the tendency of the circuitry to become more sensitive to mains transients when hot. Extra external filtering was often added for electrical noise reduction to limit emitted noise and also try and reduce the risk of power supply failure.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
Although very inefficient, these simple lights put out lots of very sharp beams of light, so they dominated the cheaper end of the disco market for decades.
I was a bit under the weather while recording this video, so I may sound a bit hoarse.
I meant to say "Safety Extra Low Voltage Equivalent" (SELV-equiv) when I described the electronic halogen transformer. (Also known as Separated Extra Low Voltage Equivalent.)
The simplest way to understand the operation of this effect is to imagine that from various positions in the room, looking through the lens will show a reflection of the lamp's filament in one of the many small mirrors. (Don't actually look directly into high intensity light beams though.)
The reference to the capacitor stopping the power supply from blowing up is the tendency of the circuitry to become more sensitive to mains transients when hot. Extra external filtering was often added for electrical noise reduction to limit emitted noise and also try and reduce the risk of power supply failure.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:-
http://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's advertising algorithms allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
Nicely done video and explanation. I was wondering if putting 4x50W LED H7 replacement bulbs into a tungsten moonflower would be sufficient lumens to make the beams reach the clouds. Probably would run into thermal issues beforehand.
I have some 100 watt halogen floodlights (they’re about 20 years old, just generic outdoor lights) and they get so hot that you can feel painfully hot heat within about 3 feet of them, and can feel the heat many feet away just when they’re shining on you
I used to work for a man who designed some of the circuit boards for a large British manufacturer of such lights (THE British manufacturer of such lights, really), and spent many hours helping him solder boards, deciding whether the motors moved with the beat, coming up with new designs etc. He even produced his own at one point, working with a gen-u-ine optics expert to use the best lenses rather than just "any old glass convex lens". They were head and shoulders better than the cheap £99 Twister. Alas, cheap and cheerful won.
Happy days though, I learned a lot from him. I often wonder what he'd have made of LED technology, whether he'd be burning the midnight oil as before, coming up with fantastic effects used by every mobile DJ through to top nightclubs.
RIP Phil.
I love 80's club lighting…. and so simple inside yet so clever. Never noticed the "filament" pattern but then again who saw them without a filter of alcohol
I thirst for knowledge. Would definitely watch a video on the driver.
Women can break your hearts, cars and games can break your wallets, sports can break your bones. But Big Clive always strengthens your heart and brain.
I have a very unusual "laser pointer" type of device that I found at a yard sale many years ago that actually has a bulb with a filament in the shape of an arrow. Would love to send it to you if you are interested.
That light looks like a Chauvet LX5. I'm selling a pair of Chinese lights on eBay if you're interested in taking a look inside.
i need a splooshmaster disko shart in my life
I've bought my first moonflower 21 years ago at age 9. I don't remember if it had a stepper motor or just a geared regular one but it changed direction on the beat.
I regret selling it, just because of the nostalgia.
Great little fixture, I have this light and love it. Put three or four on a chaser and it looks great. Lytequest made some great units back in the day!
I used to repair terrible disco lights for a living at a shop in Vancouver years ago. We got so many of these through, although usually with motors. It almost got to be a joke about how everything we got was just a type of moonflower. Moving-mirror fixture? Single-beam fancy moonflower. One of my co-workers ended up mounting a unit very much like the one in the video into a broken moving-head fixture for a DMX controllable moonflower. Still, not the worst light we worked on. That dubious honor went to a moving mirror spotlight style fixture that was… repair-proof. They just used whatever parts were cheap at the time and then modified the firmware to accommodate it. So two fixtures, same model, manufactured a month apart, did not have interchangeable stepper motors or EEPROMs.
Has there ever been a moonflower that used a prism instead of mirrors?