Let's start this video with a look at the effect, this projection device creates it's a water ripple projector and it creates an overlaying effect of riffles that interact with each other. It's a nice effect. Let's take a look at the unit and take it apart and see. What's inside so, let's take a look at this light.

I'll show you the sections of it first and i have to say it's not a very good light. It's very much a chinese cloned light that has just missed out some important features that increase the efficiency. But what we have here is a great big transform in the back. This was originally designed to take a 12 volt 100 watt lamp and the 100 watt lamps had a fairly short life span.

I swapped it for a 50 watt lamp to allow things to run cooler and last longer, and this uh the lamp just literally slots into this spring-loaded mounting and it holds it in the correct position. There is a 12-volt fan the back and to facilitate that. There's a winding from the transformer with a little circuit board, with a discrete bridge, rectifier and smoothing capacitor. I have added this resistor at some point, because otherwise that fan was very, very noisy.

Maybe i could demonstrate just how different the noise was, but when i turn this on you'll see these two pattern. Glass discs start rotating. The motors are directional they're, both running the same direction, and what that means is that, as the two fields are rotating the same direction, where they overlap, which is where the light actually shines through, one is going down the way. Another is effectively going up the way and because they're rippled glass, it creates a strong um distortion of the light, and the distortion of the light from one set of ripples then gets distorted again by the second set, and the light is then gathered by this very Small and completely unfocusible lens - and it's fired through that tiny orifice at the front of the light.

It's not an efficient light at all, but this is how many of them are made um. I also plug it in that's the best bet you can see the stuff going on you're not going to see much of a ripple effect. It's not bright at all. You can see yeah.

You can see a bright light. You can see the glass rotating like that. Perhaps you can see a slight ripple on my hand. It's a nice effect just not produced efficiently.

In a way, this is almost a situation that a video projector might do a better job with just a little loop in it. Let's see how noise the fan was. This is all the voltage, so here's the fan at the moment quite quiet. I can hear the motors turning around, let's plug it in directly in and the fan is now a lot noisier.

That would have been useful if it was the 100 watt lamp, but to be honest for this 50 watt lamp, it really isn't needed. So, let's tame that back down again, i don't know how well that uh. Well, you heard that usually a different microphone from normal um right. Well, that's about all.

I can say transformer lamp, two motors that run at 240 volts, i believe, and then the two discs interfere with each other and then the lens and that output right taiwa, i'm going to pause, i'm going to remove this assembly, so you can actually see these uh. These rotating discs better because they are the secret behind its operation, so that's them lifted up out the unit, so you can actually see them in greater detail. Fortunately, there is an earth bond onto them, so i can move them as well. So these are directional motors.

Although the motors themselves are marked cw, ccw, clockwise counterclockwise, usually it's just when it's uh like this, it is directional either it would just be cw, clockwise or c cw counterclockwise, but not both the ones that are marked both. Usually it's non-directional. If i turn these off and on again you'll see, they do both go in the right direction, although they make jitter initially, when it's turned on now, you might have seen them just jump backwards and forwards a little bit, but they both ultimately go in the right Direction the reason for that is that inside the motor there's a mechanism that, if they start going the wrong direction, it just kicks them back in the right direction until they're going, they can only go in one direction. So the first thing that happens in this is this: is the baffle plate that that light shines through and it blocks a good section of the amount of light coming through.

So it has to be a narrow, beam lamp. But then it goes on to this, which is the dual motor assembly, and the light then has to find its way through that hole there, but then behind it, there's another hole again. So by the time it gets over there unless it's a very well focused lamp. Most the light is wasted before getting to those lenses and it gets splattered, and then it has to go through that tiny lens at the front.

Uh after it's been through the glass, it's not an efficient light. It's a nice visual effect. It's certainly it works very well, but it's not a good way of doing it. There are better ones, particularly there are better ones, with an ability to focus as well, which is nice that it means that you know you can get a nice sharp effect or you can soften it in the wall, but this is fundamentally it.

This is the basis of these uh ripple, projectors, just two discs of glass with patterned glass on it. Look how off-center this one is. That's ridiculous! This is a very cheap and nasty unit, but that's a principle. It's just two overlaid pieces of glass rotating slowly in front of each other, one going effectively down one going up the way the light interferes with each layer of lenses and it projects that nice rippling effect onto the wall good effect.

Shame about the quality of this light.