I just posted the long awaited and eagerly-anticipated part II of the Build Your Own Metal Halide (Low Cost HMI) Fresnel in the articles section of the blog. I also posted a new article on Electrical Safety Guidelines.

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…)