I got into this “Cool Lights” business of mine because I thought prices were outrageous on pro level fluorescent fixtures. You can see all over this site the manifestation of what I decided to do about it; starting with the Cool Lights video and ending with low cost fluorescent fixtures. Well, I’ve gotten the same feeling again on another lighting technology: HMI. I was searching for an energy efficient hard or point light source to complement our fluorescent Cool Lights Softlight Series product line and was learning about HMI as the natural solution. Crazy prices though and no good reason at this point to have them so high.

In the last part of this article series, we’ll take a look at the Cool Lights bulb choices for the various fixtures using Osram as the standard and then coming back and looking at other equivalents. You’ll see we chose to work with industry standards so you won’t be locked into using Cool Lights bulbs for sure. (more…)

I got into this “Cool Lights” business of mine because I thought prices were outrageous on pro level fluorescent fixtures. You can see all over this site the manifestation of what I decided to do about it; starting with the Cool Lights video and ending with low cost fluorescent fixtures. Well, I’ve gotten the same feeling again on another lighting technology: HMI. I was searching for an energy efficient hard or point light source to complement our fluorescent Cool Lights Softlight Series product line and was learning about HMI as the natural solution. Crazy prices though and no good reason at this point to have them so high.

In the previous two articles in this series we talked about building your own metal halide fresnel for under $500 as my own way of educating the world on what’s going on with HMI’s, the ridiculous reasons they have been artificially overpriced and also as the introduction for my own Cool Lights Hardlight Series. I’m afraid it will take some serious re-education (and perhaps even de-programming) for some people to accept that it’s possible to offer “HMI” for the prices I will be. In this, the next-to-last installment of this multipart article I will talk about our progress on the metal halide Hardlights. In Part IV, we’ll talk about the bulbs we chose and their equivalents on the market… (more…)

I got into this “Cool Lights” business of mine because I thought prices were outrageous on pro level fluorescent fixtures. You can see all over this site the manifestation of what I decided to do about it; starting with the Cool Lights video and ending with low cost fluorescent fixtures. Well, I’ve gotten the same feeling again on another lighting technology: HMI. I was searching for an energy efficient hard or point light source to complement our fluorescent Cool Lights Softlight Series product line and was learning about HMI as the natural solution. Crazy prices though and no good reason at this point to have them so high. Read on to find out more about what I’m talking about and how you can make an HMI fresnel for under $500 in Part Two of a multipart article… (more…)

The following are the same guidelines found in the Electrical Safety section of the Cool Lights Video. Please read this before completing any electrical projects! We take the operation of electrical devices for granted as an unconscious thing nowadays. You can’t afford to do that once you start building electrical devices… (more…)

I got into this “Cool Lights” business of mine because I thought prices were outrageous on pro level fluorescent fixtures. You can see all over this site the manifestation of what I decided to do about it starting with the Cool Lights video and ending with low cost fluorescent fixtures. Well, I’ve gotten the same feeling again on another lighting technology: HMI. I was searching for an energy efficient hard or point light source to complement our fluorescent Cool Lights Softlight Series product line and was learning about HMI as the natural solution. Crazy prices though and no good reason at this point to have them so high. Read on to find out more about what I’m talking about and how you can make an HMI fresnel for under $500 in Part One of a multipart article… (more…)