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Okay, so everyone knows my house burned down, had a bad time, etc. When I decided to rebuild my home, I had a lot of time while off work and crazy to just dream up shit for this magical dream house I would one day inhabit (it took literally 3.5 years to live in it from the day of the fire). I have a lot of ideas for projects and cool shit in this house. Some of them have been implemented and some are still in the design phase. But I had this idea for this super custom chandelier that would go with my ultra modern design (I designed the entire house with a builder/architect to be exactly what I wanted down to where each and every little thing went, where the hidden spiral staircases are, where the secret rooms are its wild. I envisioned it as a hanging steel orb with a point light source in the middle, and then little tiles cut out of everything that I like most in life. Then those tiles would be welded onto the sphere with electricity run to the core of it. Then, lights would be placed inside, and those lights would cast the shadow of all the tiles onto the wall of the entryway to my house.
Well, envisioned it, and got tired of just envisioning it, so I hired a graphic designer (one of my incredibly talented patients) to make the tiles. There is a tile on there of every cat I have ever had, everything I love, all my hobbies, tons of shit that just says "Me".
She made the tiles, and then a company was hired to cut the tiles out of sheet metal in negative space.
Then, I hired a welder to weld a steel orb together, and then the tiles onto the frame, and then help me install it into the space where it was to go. I planned for its install in the house by installing a 1500 lb winch in the roof above it as well as electrical power. The power can be turned on or off, but its basically always left on, and I use two alexa smart switches to control the two bulbs.
The bulbs I opted for were a standard E26 normal light bulb socket, and a G9 socket.
The E26 bulb is colored, so I can set it to any color, but its utterly useless for throwing shadows as its a diffused light source. Its nice for mood lighting when I don't care about shadows, or, in addition to the shadows (though I currently lack the capacity to dim the G9, I plan to add that at some point some way)
The G9 socket was the absolutely brightest point light source-ish bulb I could find, which at 100w G9 Halogen is 2000 lumens.
Now, the illusion only works when you use a point light source. A point source is light that originates from a single point. The filament in the G9 is very very small, but even at the tiny size that it is, it still isn't a perfect "point" and so the shadows cast on farther away areas are more blurry than the ones up close.
I am looking to upgrade this thing. I need a light source that is as perfectly "point" as possible. I am suspecting that the answer to this is some sort of Arc light bulb or arc lamp, or some other tiny arc lighting device, but I have no idea what would be compatible with the 120v hookups I have in there. I can swap out the sockets if I really need to, though if it can be adapted to fit either of the current two sockets that would make life a lot easier. A transformer could also be wired in if it uses some high voltage or something. I'm down to do whatever, I just don't know what the actual bulb/electronics are that would fit this specific niche need as this isn't my field so I don't even know what exists and googling around trying to figure it out has been utterly useless.
I am open to any and all suggestions that would work in this thing. The chandelier is amazing, and the lights/shadows cast by it make the entryway to my home basically scream "WELCOME TO THE IMAGINARIUM OF DR POWERS" but I would like to make it brighter if possible.
I don't think its possible, but colored light would be even better, though LEDs capable of that would have to be some bizarre omnidirectional non-diffused RGB LED of insane brightness that I don't think currently exists.
Again, can't stress this enough. The light must be a point source or it just looks like a blurry mess. It cannot use diffused light bulbs or even a regular light bulb. The light must be bright and emanate from a single point.
Anyone have any ideas of what type of bulb would work in this situation? Can I do this without upgrading the wiring? Is it possible to adapt a G9 or E26 socket to something that would support an arc lamp bulb? What arc lamp bulb would be ideal for this? How do I shield that bulb if it releases UV (any arc bulb I get is going to need some sort of UV filtration I would guess as I enjoy having functional retinas).
I welcome any input or help on this project. I've gotten it pretty far, and I'm really proud of how it turned out. I absolutely love walking into my house at the end of a day of patients, saying "alexa turn on welcome home" and having the chandelier switch to shadow mode and all the lights in the house change for my arrival. The entire house is 100% smart, there is not a single switch in the house that isn't voice controllable, I built this house to be a futuristic technical marvel in terms of the technology in it, but this isn't something that can be just "store bought" so I need some brains to help me push it further.
thank you in advance to anyone who will lend me their cognitive power on this one. I promise I will pay you back with continued years of my life trying to improve implant technology and transgender care until I get to a point where everyone gets the transition they want quickly, safely, and efficiently and I can retire and say "I did a good job".
Anyway, on to the pics:
I appreciate any insight, advice, or technical acumen anyone can provide to this little pet project of mine. I've taken it nearly as far as I can go.
PS: Someday, I plan to figure out some mechanism to allow it to slowly rotate, but for now, I'm okay with a static image. It can be rotated some to show different shadows in different places but it does not rotate on its own yet. If I can get the light source problem solved, I might make another post about adding some sort of slow rotation device that maintains the electrical connection and can sustain hundreds of pounds of weight.
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