Mini lights for a Stop Motion Animation help

[SHuberts]

So I’ve been working this past month at a stop motion animation studio, ultimately as a set/prop maker, and recently we needed some practical lights for a living room scene where I wanted to add a couple lamps as well as a ceiling light. I knew that they needed to be plugged in because even tho an LED light takes very little power, if it was powered by battery then there’s a chance that even by the end of the day of shooting still shot after still shot, you may see a slight dimming.

So, after speaking with @lukecyca a bit, we found a few mini 3.8v incandescent light bulbs at VHS and wired them up to a 5v power adapter.

This seemed to work perfect and after modeling a few mini lamps and lights around them, I put them into the set and was pretty excited. And so was the director and fellow workers!

BUT… at the end of shooting day 1, one of the bulbs burned out. Then a few hours later, the same lamp burned out a second bulb, which I figured meant that I may have the wires squished together a little too much and that it could be shorting it out and blowing bulbs (?) but then another light from a separate lamp burned out… now I’m out of replacement bulbs and wanna find out what’s going on! Are these little car lamp bulbs just not meant to be on that long or maybe they’re just old?

Anyone have any thoughts or suggestions cause even if I can’t fix it on this scene, there are 9 more sets to make so I’d love to wire up a lot more lights! And preferably some nice warm incandescents, but LED’s could work as well if I get the right colors (or gel them).

Any thoughts are useful as I don’t know a ton about it! But also, here are a bunch of shots from the set for you to enjoy… ALSO it’s from a scene where the house has been ransacked and people were kindapped so that’s why it looks like a mess haha… it’s purposeful

enjoy!

[packetbob]

if you are running the 3.8v bulbs at 5v then they will probably not last long…
you could try putting every two bulbs in series and if still bright enough then they may last a lot longer…
or get a lower voltage power supply…
or get 5V lights

the set looks great…

[Rahakasvi]

awesome pictures. I wouldn’t want to be the one keeping track of continuity in that scene.

seems one lamp is rated for 0.3A… maybe you are driving too much current to it? usually my electronic projects blow up with too much current.

[lukecyca]

As Bob said above, running lamps with too much voltage will burn them out. Running them too low will make them dim (but they’ll last a long time). An easy way to halve the voltage to two identical lights is just wire them in series.

However, we probably have other wall wart power supplies in the bins at VHS that are ~4v. IIRC the lights weren’t all the same though. Some might take different voltages, so you may need to have multiple power supplies, or we can rig up some resistors to drop the voltage for the lights that want a lower voltage (or that you want to be dimmer).

Or just get @packetbob to help you build a full-on DMX-controlled dimmer pack for these.

[toptekkie]

Just wire 2 diodes 1N4007 or equiv ( we have reels of them ) in series with
each lamp
From 5V that will give 3.8 at the lamp
F

[SHuberts]

ok ya I’ll see how a couple in series looks and works, simple test! Thanks

[SHuberts]

great advice, this is exactly what I need to know. thank you!