pug43

ive read many electrical posts about electrical consumption and such, i bet there is a way that you can use car stereo amps and use them to power your lights...
all you would do is buy 5 cheaper 1200 watt amps... which would end up costing 800 bucks...and use those to power your 5 1000 watters....
spending 800 bucks would sure as hell be a lot better than risk geting caught.

smokeymcpot0042

Thats cool...but what are you going to hook up you amps too? A car??? And car amps run on DC...and the lights run on AC.Correct?
Have you ever seen a car stereo amp with a place to plug in a regular househole plug?
A car battery is 12 volts if i'm not mistaken(someone correct me if I'm wrong)...A normal household plug (like one the lights would plug into) are 120 Volts in the USA.
When i was younger I had lots of amps in my cars and let me tell you.....if you bought a cheap 1200 watt amp from like Radio Shack....you would be lucky to get a actual 500 watt peak...

All in all ...you idea would be great if it could work...Who knows...someone on here may know if it is possiable to do...but I'll put my money on saying NO...
Good Luck

gpguy2

Yea don't think it will work....... I think you are confusing amplifiers with transformers. No matter how you cut it or slice it to run a 1000 watt light you will need roughly 1000 volts x ampere. Which is what a watt is.

Hash_Brown

i have this strange feeling that your gonna end up burning your house down at some point in the future.

if you that worried about electrical comsumption getting you caught buy gas power generators to run your lights.

even if your setup could work, i would be scared to death i'd burn the house down.

but definately good job of thinking outside the box

-hb

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Hydromaniac

Now this is the funniest thread that I've read in awhile. I don't know whether to take it seriously or is pug43 having a lend of us all ???

smokeymcpot0042

Believe me...that thought has crossed my mind also...

sumguy

A. It wouldn't work
B. If it did work, it would end up using more power than just running the light the regular way.

C. Let's suppose we wanted this to work.... 1st of all let me explain that all electronic devices have little pockets of smoke inside that actually make the device work. The different case styles are just for ease of determining exactly what kind of smoke is inside, ie. capacitive smoke, resistive smoke, transisting smoke, amplifying smoke, etc... Now that you know that we can proceed.
You cannot plug the input of your amplifier into the wall socket, it would very quickly let all the smoke out of the components of the amps input section and the unit would stop working. The input to the amp can only be at a line level (RCA Plugs) line level is -10db or around .7 volts. Assuming we had a .7 volt source to feed it with. That source would have to be AC (alternating current) which means it's waveform, when viewed on an oscilloscope, would be wavey (sp?). Wavey as in 50/60 waves a second depending on where you live. OK, that's not so hard to find, buy a signal generator or oscillator, set it to output at .7 volts at 60Hz, feed this to the input of your amp. OK, we have input. Now for the output, let's suppose you bought a 1000 Watt amplifier.. Now, is this 1000w into 4 ohms? 8 ohms? 16 ohms??? Let's assume it's 1000w into 8 ohms. OK, wire up the socket to the output of the amp. .. What happened? You let all the smoke out of the components in the output section of your amp! You see, incandescant bulbs have very little resistance causing the amplifier to try and pump too much power through it thus overheating the amplifiers output transistors and letting out all of their smoke. OK, lets get a HPS bulb now. Now that we have bought a new 5000w amplifier that will produce all 5000w into a 2 ohm load (we learned from our last mistake) we can proceed. Let's wire this baby up!! No need for a ballast, just wire it straight to the bulb! OK, flip the switch...... Hmmmmm...... OK..........OK, we're waiting!.............. Oh , turn the amp all the way up! (strange buzzing noise) .... Hmmmmm.....OK, we're still waiting...... Oh wait!!! There's a glow!....... POW! You just let all the smoke out of your HPS bulb! Not to mention the fact that now you have to go to the hospital and have them remove all the shards of glass from your eyes and face. Next time don't watch the bulb so intently. Step back a bit. Now that you've recovered, we need a new bulb! Better get a ballast with this one as well... OK, lets do this right, let's go get a 10000w amplifier that will run it's full load into 2 ohms, the 10000 watts is so we can actually get the outputs of the amp to produce 120V of AC power. OK, all is hooked up. The amp is plugged into the wall and it's inputs are being fed by your oscillator set to output .7 volts at 60Hz. Now, let's put our volt meter on the outputs, slowly turn up the amplifier volume until you see 120 on the meter, this means the outputs are now at 120 volts, the same as a wall socket, oddly enough Anyway, now, connect the amplifier outputs to the ballast and turn that baby on! ..... Hey! Wow! It works, we can run our lights off an amplifier. Congratulations! You just spent $5000 on a 10000w amp, oscillator, volt meter, and wiring to make a HPS bulb that usually runs at 400 watts run at 10000 watts costing you almost 3 times as much money! Hey, what a great idea! Do you smell smoke?

Sorry! I just HAD to do this! No offense Pug43 I haven't always been the electronics guru (yeah right) that I am now. I used to think that 120 VAC meant 120 volts and there was some kind of vacuum that was somehow involved. I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out what the vacuum was for.

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gpguy2

Oh my goodness that's nasty sumguy, he just simply asked a question. He's right tho pug43, it will not work. Energy can not be created or destroyed, can't get something for nothing.

pug43

sorry i aint no electronics scientist...it just crossed my mind..

CaseyJones

This is precisely the reason you shouldnt try this.

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