I’m using an instructable as reference for a project and it says to use anything available that draws 5-10A as a ballast. Examples were a hair dryer, I thin toaster, and also an incandescent bulb as a test article.
I don’t quite understand include any of those things in the circuit. Is it as simple as ripping the guts or if a hair dryer to get to the heating element and writing it in with the exposed leads?
Any general information on ballasts that aren’t for florescent lighting would be very helpful
I just had a thought, if I’ve got a laptop charger or similar brick that supplies 5A DC, do you think there’s any reason that wouldn’t work?
I can think of three potential issues with a charging brick; The increase of resistance as a light or element warms up may actually be desirable as it would allow a higher start up current before providing stable DC Secondly, a charging brick would drop the voltage down to 12/24ish Thirdly, you won’t be able to wire it in series as you can’t share a DC negative / mains neutral on the return path if there’s transformer or different voltages