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Jeffery m

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Okay guys so this year I'm wanting to do a ferris wheel and a carousel so my question to you is are battery operated lights my only choice

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You should be able to use any lights. You have to figure real carousel use 110v lights. 

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The term you need to research is: Slip Rings. Your cars alternator uses them for the rotating field coil.

120V is more dangerous, but less sensitive to contact issues.   I would not try to do 5V for anything but a very low current (position?) sense lead

(My Navy radar set had over a dozen in the Antenna. Some carried many amps (they were silver plated) of AC or DC. I was lucky, I never had to service them, it would have been Hours with my head down a tunnel.)

I think we can rule out "Rotating Transformer". first it is AC only. Second: it is cu$tome built :)

 

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I was wondering more about how to plug in the lights without cords being wrapped around

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41 minutes ago, Jeffery m said:

I was wondering more about how to plug in the lights without cords being wrapped around

That is what slip rings are for. You feed the IN to 'brushes, the attach the outlet to the rings, which are on the rotating member

Here is a good summary of your issue

http://www.electro-miniatures.com/HowSlipRingWorks.shtml

BTW if you only need 1 circuit (2 prong)   Use a isolated split axle      Each bearing is insulated from the support and is one conductor to the axle (really 2 small with an insulator between --x--  )

A see-saw roto-motion might be simpler. Rotate ~400 degrees, reverse.  Repeat

Use very high strand count wire

 

 

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51 minutes ago, TheDucks said:

That is what slip rings are for. You feed the IN to 'brushes, the attach the outlet to the rings, which are on the rotating member

Here is a good summary of your issue

http://www.electro-miniatures.com/HowSlipRingWorks.shtml

BTW if you only need 1 circuit (2 prong)   Use a isolated split axle      Each bearing is insulated from the support and is one conductor to the axle (really 2 small with an insulator between --x--  )

A see-saw roto-motion might be simpler. Rotate ~400 degrees, reverse.  Repeat

Use very high strand count wire

 

 

Runs in the same theory as bumper cars run on. 

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You can use battery operated lights if you don't want them synchronized with your show. If you want to control the lights as part of your show, battery operated lights will not work, since you need to plug them into the controllers...

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9 minutes ago, lightingnewb said:

You can use battery operated lights if you don't want them synchronized with your show. If you want to control the lights as part of your show, battery operated lights will not work, since you need to plug them into the controllers...

Regarding a ferris wheel with lights and no wired connectivity, you could run low voltage DC powered lights (either dumb lights or smart pixels).  For synchronizing the lights to your show, you could use either WiFi (for LAN based communications) or Easy Light Linkers (for LOR network based communications).  Then power the lights, controllers, and communications from one or more batteries.

 

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thanks for the input all.  My ferris wheel will come on at end of show with the other static all that will be on a timer Is it possible to put the battery powered lights on a timer? 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Battery powered lights... are... always on? They run on battery power, so... I would assume not. I have zero experience in this field, since my display is not static (fully synchronized).

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Hi Jeffery I am also looking to add a Ferris wheel to my display this year. I looked at many different options as to how I was going to light it and came with using a 3 wire slip ring to get 120V power to the inside of the wheel. I found these 3 wire 30A slip rings on E Bay for $21.84 http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-3-Wires-30A-250Rpm-600-VDC-VAC-Wind-Generator-Slip-Ring-Wind-Turbine-/321492537873?rmvSB=true and purchased 2 of them(1 for back up) and after testing found that they work great. I am going to use a CMB-24D dumb RGB controller and ELL mounted to the inside of the Ferris wheel to control the lights. Only because this will be located to far away from the nearest controller to daisy chain. There is another web site that has multiple styles of slips rings (ie. data network slip rings, just about any wire config. you could need)  for a very reasonable price. Most of them are under $100.00 dollars. For the length of time that this will be running I'm hoping these slip rings will hold up (got spare just in case)  as the commercial ones are quite expensive. They use these ones on windmills at 250 rpm so I think they should hold up on a Ferris wheel at 25 RPM. Will keep you all posted as to how they work. 

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On ‎4‎/‎6‎/‎2017 at 8:30 AM, Jeffery m said:

Okay guys so this year I'm wanting to do a ferris wheel and a carousel so my question to you is are battery operated lights my only choice

Might pm the question to LIGHTZILLA here on the forum. He (Scott) has a Ferris wheel, a Merry-go-round, a Train... He had some how-to's on the Canadian forum, but I'm not getting them to come up right now. Here's one of his videos from a few years ago:

 

 

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Bigfrog, nice find on the slip rings. Off hand, 25 RPM seems awfully fast for a ferris wheel.


Sent from my phone using Tapatalk, so blame any typos on Android!

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Your probably right Jim 25 RPM seems a little fast. I'll have to do some more research on what everyone else is doing for speed. That being said these slip rings should hold up to the lower RPM speeds. If they do I will be putting one on every seat so I can power up an inflatable. I got a really good deal on 16 - 3' minions ($5.00/each) after Christmas and I would like to put one in every seat. 

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I think here should be a decimal point in there.  2.5 RPM

For those of you that remember 33-1/3 LPs. We know how fast that is

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On ‎4‎/‎22‎/‎2017 at 9:16 AM, Mega Arch said:

Might pm the question to LIGHTZILLA here on the forum. He (Scott) has a Ferris wheel, a Merry-go-round, a Train... He had some how-to's on the Canadian forum, but I'm not getting them to come up right now. Here's one of his videos from a few years ago:

After looking at the video, kind of looks like it's turning at about 4 to 5 RPM. Nice speed I think I'll go with that.

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