Hi,
I have read where several people use night lights, or rope lights to accommodate their chickens after the main coop light turns off. I’ve never kept chickens myself so I don’t know if it is a necessary thing or not but it made sense to me so I wired for it.
I’ve been accused of over-thinking projects before.
This isn’t a new idea for me as I’ve worked with fiber-optics before.
In this case I wanted to use fiber-optic filaments that I had left over from a theater build I did years before to create a star-field in the coop ceiling. I wanted to use an inexpensive light source to illuminate the filaments. That led me to LED’s which are very bright intense lights with very little power consumption.
Digging throw my toolbox I found a Harbor Freight 9 led flashlight that ran on 3 AAA batteries that I got free with a coupon and a 4 watt transformer. I removed the batteries and soldered the transformer wires directly to the flashlight. Yay! Free light source.
After running all the filaments to a northern ca sky star pattern I downloaded from an online source, I bundled and taped all the filaments together cut them flush. Then I attached them to a tube and attached the flashlight to the tube.
I had previously wired an outlet to an in-wall timer and plugged the transformer connected to the flashlight to the switched outlet. Even though it isn’t as bright as I thought it would be, as your eyes get acclimated there is enough light to move around without bumping into anything. I figured that I could have this come on before the main coop light goes out and stay on for about hour or so.
The pictures I have are of construction. I still need to fill sand and touch up the paint (Kelley Moore Paint Prairie Night Sky). I’ll add more images to my profile page as I go.
Images:
Lights on
Lights off
back side of the plywood
light source
Thank you for looking.
I have read where several people use night lights, or rope lights to accommodate their chickens after the main coop light turns off. I’ve never kept chickens myself so I don’t know if it is a necessary thing or not but it made sense to me so I wired for it.
I’ve been accused of over-thinking projects before.
This isn’t a new idea for me as I’ve worked with fiber-optics before.
In this case I wanted to use fiber-optic filaments that I had left over from a theater build I did years before to create a star-field in the coop ceiling. I wanted to use an inexpensive light source to illuminate the filaments. That led me to LED’s which are very bright intense lights with very little power consumption.
Digging throw my toolbox I found a Harbor Freight 9 led flashlight that ran on 3 AAA batteries that I got free with a coupon and a 4 watt transformer. I removed the batteries and soldered the transformer wires directly to the flashlight. Yay! Free light source.
After running all the filaments to a northern ca sky star pattern I downloaded from an online source, I bundled and taped all the filaments together cut them flush. Then I attached them to a tube and attached the flashlight to the tube.
I had previously wired an outlet to an in-wall timer and plugged the transformer connected to the flashlight to the switched outlet. Even though it isn’t as bright as I thought it would be, as your eyes get acclimated there is enough light to move around without bumping into anything. I figured that I could have this come on before the main coop light goes out and stay on for about hour or so.
The pictures I have are of construction. I still need to fill sand and touch up the paint (Kelley Moore Paint Prairie Night Sky). I’ll add more images to my profile page as I go.
Images:
Lights on
Lights off
back side of the plywood
light source
Thank you for looking.
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