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| By bavetta
  1 rating
A fluorescent light starter in series with an incandescent light bulb makes a cool flickering light effect - useful for making a cheap strobe, Halloween haunted house effect, or simulate flakey wiring. |
You can adjust the flicker to be infrequent or extreme depending on the watt rating of the light-bulb and the kind of fluorescent light starter. This is what I've found:
| Starter Type | 90 Watt | 90 Watt | 90 Watt | | FS-5 for 4-6-8 Watt | .25 Hz | .8 Hz | 1.3 Hz | | FS-2 for 14-15-20 Watt | 6 Hz | 7 Hz | 9 Hz | | FS-12 for 32 Watt | 0 Hz | 0 Hz | 0 Hz | | FS-25 for 25 Watt | 4.5 Hz | 6 Hz | 5 Hz |
When the light flickers, it momentarily turns off the light while a bulb (?) inside of the starter arcs. I don't know much about fluorescent lights, but by taking apart the starter it looks like it is simply made of a capacitor in parallel with the arc bulb. The capacitor may spike the voltage on the circuit, so I wouldn't use this on the same circuit as any fragile equipment. It seems like the bulb might burn out quickly, but I have run lights with the same starter for over a week straight and had no problems. I have, however, been able to break the starter by connecting it to too many lights (4-5 100 Watt Bulbs).
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