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
Yes, slightly inefficient but it’s an interesting workaround. I would say just grab a plug in lamp and splice the cable on the netral but this project really should have an earth connection for safety. Grab an extension lead and a standard ceiling socket, cut the female head off the lead and mount the light socket to some timber and pass the earth through and bond to any non-live exposed metal. Smashing the light also functions as a ghetto emergency stop button :) Edit: be aware that DC suffers more voltage drop than AC, keep the lines short or use thicker cables to compensate