Strobe Questions

[captainron19]

2 questions about strobes. I ordered the c9 6 watt incandescents and they arent in yet so I cannot play with them yet.

1. If I want to have them on at a reduced power and slowly brighten, is there a minimum percentage for them to come on? I know some people talked about "charging" the LED strobes at 15% to have them come on and be random.

2. Plan on putting some in my trees.... what kind of spacing do most of you do between the bulbs?

[reitan_family]

From my understanding, and I'm no expert but a strobe needs to be on or off. Any dimming or anything else will shorten the life of the strobe. I know more people will follow with more information. Placement is up to you. Last year was my first year of strobes and I just placed them around our tree. There was no random order. Good luck with your display....

[Guest wbottomley]

LED strobes are the only ones you can precharge. All others are strictly off/on command.

[captainron19]

Thought so (about the on/off for incandescents) but I thought I owuld double check with the experts here!

[Guest wbottomley]

captainron19 wrote:

I thought I owuld double check with the experts here!

Talking about ruling me out. LOL

[LORi P]

captainron19 wrote:

I ordered the c9 6 watt incandescents

I have seen incandescent strobes for sale on several websites. But the discussions on here usually only talk about Xeon and LED strobes. Does anyone out there have any experience with incandescent strobes and also experience with LED and/or Xeon for comparison?

[Kevin Holcomb]

Here is a video comparison that I have seen posted on here before. Should give you a good reference.

[-klb-]

I've used a bunch of xenon strobes, and I have seen the LED ones. But I've never seen an incandescent strobe.

[TJ Hvasta]

Good thing CaptRon's a firefighter.. dimming/twinkling strobes will probably light'em up!

[Richard Hamilton]

I don't have LED strobes. I don't like the concept of attempting a precharge at reduced voltage (15% as quoted). Thus, agreeing with Williams comment. I also don't think there is such a thing as an incandescant strobe. There are some stage gobos that are referred to as strobes sometimes, so perhaps that is what is meant.

There are times when I want my strobes to fire suddenly on que with a sharp audio queue. In such cases, I 'precharge' my strobes by giving them full juice for a fraction of a second... almost to the point that they fire, yet don't. I do that precharging about 5 seconds before I want the real effect to take place. It works perfectly for me.

[Steven]

captainron19 wrote:

I ordered the c9 6 watt incandescents

I looked for "incandescent strobes", and what I found was mostly xenon strobes. I think people are incorrectly calling xenon strobes "incandescent" for some reason.

An incandescent strobe wouldn't make much sense, because the constant inrush of current would quickly burn out the bulbs.

There are basically 3 types of electric light: incandescent, gas-discharge, and electroluminescent.

Incandescent means something (usually a filament) gets hot and emits light. These will take a finite amount of time to heat up and cool down, so are not best for strobes.

Gas-discharge includes arc lights, neon lights, florescent lights, and xenon flash tubes. A current passes through a gas, which then emits light. In the case of a strobe, charge stored in a capacitor discharges through the gas all at once, producing a bright flash. A xenon strobe will last until the seal in the tube leaks, allowing the gas to escape; or the electronics that charge and trigger the discharge fail.