News

LEDs Make a Splash in Pool and Poolside Lighting

By BulbAmerica Editor

The summer has arrived and once more the swimming pool has probably become a prominent location at your home or business. Swimming pools are naturally illuminated during the day, however at night they are often left unlit. With the proper lighting, the swimming pool can be an attractive evening lighting attraction. Optima’s brand new 17w PAR56 RGB color mixing LED lamp is designed specifically for swimming pools and is an outstanding lighting option. The PAR56 LED has 252 LED bulbs and four color changing patterns to turn your pool into an oasis of light and color: a single color change mode, a switching color change mode, a fading color change mode, and solid color mode. These modes can be controlled with an easy-to-use RF remote control, allowing you to regularly change your swimming pool’s look. Like all LEDs, Optima’s PAR56 LED has a long lifespan at 20,000 rated hours. If there is a lip above the water in your pool, you can use a LED strip light to add a band of light around the edge of your pool. Optima offers numerous RGB waterproof strip light packages. These strip lights are protected with a silicon coating and come in 150 LED bulb and 350 LED bulb versions.

Illuminating the pool itself is one way to add flair to your night time home lighting. Lighting the area around the pool is another way to add dimension depth to your pool area. If you have plants, statues, or rock arrangements surrounding your pool area, draw attention to them using uplighting. LEDs are great for uplighting and come in a variety of colors.MR16s are also a good choice for uplighting given their concentrated beam. You may want to surround your pool with electric lanterns or torches. Cold cathode compact fluorescent bulbs and LED bulbs are good choice in these applications given their durability and long life. Lanterns and torches often house the bulb in either a clear glass housing or a frosted glass housing. For the most appealing light in a lantern application, you will want to match a clear glass lantern with a clear glass bulb and a frosted lantern with a frosted bulb. Lanterns and torches, in addition to providing attractive lighting, make your pool area safer for your family and friends or patrons of your business.

Your pool and pool area should not be left in the dark as the sun goes down. There are numerous bulbs available for the lighting of your pool area. The basic considerations you should make in selecting a bulb are whether or not the bulb will be long lasting and durable in an outdoor setting, and how the bulb will perform in the specific application you envision for it.

The Empire State Building Lights Up the Night and Goes Green Too

By BulbAmerica Editor

The Empire State Building at night is the crown jewel of the New York City skyline, and is perhaps the most famous city skyline in the world. The Empire State Building’s illuminated top is iconic, it’s image among the most well known images of any building at night. The Empire State Building, which was completed in 1931, had its first light, a searchlight, placed on top of it in November of 1932 to celebrate the presidential victory of Franklin Roosevelt. It became a nighttime beacon in 1964, with the installation of floodlights on the top 30 floors of the building. Color lights were first installed in 1976 for the United States’ bicentennial, illuminating the building’s tower with red, white, and blue. In 1977, additions to the Empire State Building’s exterior lighting were made, creating the iconic image which we are familiar with today. The installation included 207 metal halide high intensity discharge (HID) lamps and 304 fluorescent lamps illuminating the building from the 72nd floor to the base of the TV tower. The last addition to the building’s lighting took place in 1984. An automated lighting system, which included 880 vertical 75 watt fluorescent tubes and 220 horizontal fluorescent tubes were installed on the upper portion of the TV tower mast. The horizontal bulbs are organized into different panels and produce green, blue, yellow, and white lights, thus creating the lighting displays you see today.

Though the Empire State Building’s exterior lighting has not been changed since the 1980s, the interior lighting underwent substantial greening in the spring of 2009. The Empire State Building contains 3,194,547 light bulbs, so developing an environmentally friendly lighting solution for the building’s vast light system was a challenge. The $100 million dollar greening project included the replacement of old incandescent light bulbs with more energy efficient ones as well as the installation of motion detector systems to only light rooms when they are occupied. These energy efficient renovations, including lighting renovations, are projected to cut the building’s energy consumption by 38% and save it $4.4 million dollars annually.

BulbAmerica has ideas and products to help you go green too! Check out our blog and our website for ideas and products to save the environment, energy, and help you spend less on energy. Go green today!

In the Spot Light #4: Low Pressure Versus High Pressure Sodium Lamps

By BulbAmerica Editor

In the next installment of my ‘In the Spotlight Series’, I will look at low pressure and high pressure sodium bulbs and how they differ. These two lamps have been a source of confusion for some our customers, so let’s get started clearing the air regarding these two lamps. Low pressure sodium (LPS) and high pressure sodium (HPS) bulbs belong to the HID lamp family, which means that they produce light by exciting gasses and vaporized metals with electrical current to sufficiently excite them and produce light. The composition of LPS and HPS lamps is somewhat similar, they both contain a noble gas and solid sodium. HPS lamps may contain additional metals and have a slightly different construction than LPS lamps, but the specifics of these differences are not necessary for the purposes of this article. What really sets LPS and HPS lamps apart is the qualities of their light and the size of their lamps. LPS lamps are known for their very yellow or orange light, these lamps are most commonly used in certain commercial and residential outdoor applications and street lighting. LPS bulbs are widely used because they are very efficient and have a very high luminous efficacy of around 200w/lm. One of the reasons for LPS bulbs’ efficiency is that nearly all of the light produced is easily visible by the human eye, close to zero ultraviolet or infrared light is produced. LPS lamps can be very large, reaching beyond 3.5ft in length. It is for this reason that sometimes streetlights or highway light fixtures are very large.

HPS lamps are used most often in outdoor applications such as street lamps, parking lots, and flood lighting and horticultural applications, where color rendering is not a priority. HPS lamps are efficient as far as HID lamps go, but do not have the quite the luminous efficacy of LPS lamps. Though HPS lamps are not as efficient as LPS lamps, they have excellent light spans with life hour ratings of 16,000 – 24,000 hours and are also typically smaller in size. The higher atmospheric pressure of the HPS lamps allows its contents to be assembled in a smaller lamp, and thus allowing the lamp to be installed in smaller fixtures, making it easier and less cumbersome to install and use. HPS lamps’ color temperatures are typically a yellowish-white light.

BulbAmerica has a great selection of both LPS and HPS bulbs to satisfy your lighting needs. Check out what we have to offer. As always, do not hesitate to leave a comment or question on the blog or give us a call at 1-877-622-0897.

Optima's Oscillating Motor: Make Your Lighting a Moving Experience

By BulbAmerica Editor

In addition to quality LED and DJ products, Optima Lighting offers creative products to get the most out of your existing lighting fixtures. A while back I wrote an article about the simple but extremely useful PAR can stand, that allows you to turn any PAR can into a floor mounted fixture and thus use it for wall washes or other applications. Optima has struck again with another creative lighting product to turn any PAR can into a oscillating fixture, the Oscillating Effect Motor. By simply mounting your PAR can’s yoke to the bolt on the motor’s platform, you can give your PAR can or other fixture an oscillating effect, which is a handy and inexpensive way to add some more excitement to your lighting or make your PAR cans draw an audience’s or a passerby’s’ attention.

Optima’s Oscillating Motor can handle fixtures up to 20lbs and is only 6.5lbs, thus making it durable and easy to transport. Optima’s Oscillating Effect Motor is another creative tool to get the most out of your PAR cans or any other fixtures. Check out all of our other stage lighting products and you’ll discover that we have everything you need to maximize your stage lighting. Feel free to leave a question or comment on this article, our Facebook, or call us at 1-877-620-1762 for any remaining questions you may have.

American DJ's Spectrum LED: A Powerful Moonflower Effect for a Great Price

By BulbAmerica Editor

Once again American DJ’s commitment to low cost high quality lighting effects comes through with an innovating and exciting unit, this time it is the 30w Spectrum LED. With an output equivalent to a 150w halogen lamp, the Spectrum LED is powered by 64 powerful LEDs, each rated at 100,000 hours each. The Spectrum LED can run for hours and hours without stop due its lack of duty cycles and moving parts. This means that the Spectrum LED packs a punch but its easy on the electricity and maintenance, leaving you more power and money left on your circuits and in your wallet for additional light fixtures. The Spectrum LED produces a bright and colorful moonflower effect that can be projected on a wall or the dance floor, adding energy where you need it. Like many of ADJ’s products, the Spectrum LED comes operable in either stand alone (sound active, DMX controlled or auto) and master slave modes, giving you a tremendous amount of flexibility when it comes to where and how you will you the Spectrum LED. Remember, use the Spectrum LED with fog or haze effects to really accentuate the sharpness of the unit’s light beams and to get the most out of this moonflower effect unit.

BulbAmerica has the Spectrum LED and other ADJ products in stock now. Also, don’t forget to check out our wide selection of other LED DJ effects. As usual, leave a comment or question on our blog or Facebook or call us at 1-877-622-0897.

ADJ's TRI Phase LED Excites the Crowd with Loud Color

By BulbAmerica Editor

American DJ has struck again, this time with its TRI Phase LED! The 23w TRI Phase is a new moonflower effect featuring ADJ’s patented Tri Color LED technology that mixes red, blue, green, purple, white, yellow, and cyan to create a nearly infinite color pallet. ADJ’s unique 10w integrated 3-in-1 LED light source, with each bulb rated at 50,000hrs, produces little to no heat making this unit efficient and environmentally friendly. Furthermore, this unit does not have duty cycles, meaning you can run your unit all night without any problem. The high quality optics of the TRI Phase LED and the 1.8˚stepper motor ensures that the 57 tight light beams will be moving smoothly.

When it comes to control, the TRI Phase LED gives you options. You can run this unit in sound-active, DMX, and master/slave modes, making this fixture work with your venue whether you have an extensive lighting system or no controller at all. Combine the TRI Phase LED with a fog machine or haze machine and you will have an unbeatable effect at an unbeatable price.

Make BulbAmerica your one stop shop for LED DJ lighting effects. We have the TRI Phase LED and many other ADJ products in stock, so make sure you check out everything we have to offer. As usual, leave a comment or a question on our blog or our Facebook or give us a call a 1-877-622-0897 with any further questions.

ADJ's Mega Bar Pro: A Wash and Color Changer in One

By BulbAmerica Editor

As LED technology becomes more and more of a lighting mainstay, increasingly imaginative LED effects are being dream up. One of my favorite LED lighting effects right now is American DJ’s Mega Bar Pro. This multi-purpose fixture functions as a RGB color changer/color chaser and as a wash unit, thus giving you fantastic bang for your buck. Though the Mega Bar pro may be two fixtures in one, it has an energy draw of only 45w, which is less than most conventional lighting fixtures. To add the Mega Bar's versatility, it can be controlled in three modes (stand alone, sound active, and DMX) and has eight different DMX work modes, ranging from 2 channels to 29. The Mega Bar Pro features 27 one watt LEDs, all of which are rated at 50,000hrs to ensure that you will be shining bright for a long time.

The Mega Bar Pro is not just a dream machine for DJ or club lighting, it can also be used in an architectural lighting application. Its variable color changing allows the Mega Bar Pro to produce a nearly limitless gamut of colors and its 30˚ beam angle means that the light produced will be a wide, flat wash. The Mega Bar can be mounted on the floor, to a truss, or placed on the ground, giving you great flexibility with regard to what surface you decide to illuminate. The Mega Bar Pro features an on board LED display and buttons so you can fully operate it without a controller or music. Furthermore, the inclusion of static color scenes and built in programs adds to the usability and versatility of this fixture, allowing you to set up your Mega Par and forget about it.

ADJ’s Mega Bar Pro is an exciting RGB color changer/chaser and wall wash wrapped in one 8lb package. This fixture is a great choice for a DJ on the go that does every type of venues from weddings to clubs and needs versatile lighting. Check out our other American DJ products and our other LED lighting effects. As always, feel free to comment or post a question on our blog or Facebook, or call 1-877-622-0897.

ADJ'S Color Shot Strobe: Great Light at the Right Price

By BulbAmerica Editor

The search for inexpensive yet high quality LED lighting effects can be exhausting. Every so often, however, you come across certain products that stand out in price, performance, and reliability. American DJ’s Color Shot strobe light is one of these products. The Color Shot is an intelligent RGB color changing strobe with a maximum strobe rate of 13fps. When it comes to controlling your Color Shot you have the option of running it in either sound-active, automatic, and DMX modes. This allows you to use the Color Shot regardless of how simple or complex your lighting system is. This 6lb strobe is compact and extremely light weight, making it a fantastic option for the DJ or band on the go. This long life and low heat strobe is ideal for any performance and any venue.

BulbAmerica stocks ADJ’s Color Shot and much more, so be sure to check out all the American DJ products we have to offer. As usual leave a comment or question on our blog or Facebook or call 1-877-622-0897.

DJ Effect Lighting: A Guide for the Perplexed

By BulbAmerica Editor

If you've ever shopped for DJ lighting effects you’ve probably been overwhelmed by the numerous types there are. What doesn’t help is that very seldom can you find a guide that enumerates the different effects, rather than just the different fixtures themselves. In this article I will go through the different effects and explain the differences between the effects and what you can expect from them. So, let’s get started. The simplest effects in the DJs arsenal, and the ones of with which people are most familiar, is the strobe. The strobe, which is now very commonly powered by LEDs, can either be white light or colored and flashes light at a variable rate, creating the unbeatable robot-like strobe effect. The beacon is another fairly popular choice for DJs. This inexpensive technique features a colored plastic cylinder or cone with a rotating bulb inside. Beacons are great for being placed on top of a speaker or anywhere where a little extra flair is desired.

Beam effects are one of the most widely used effects. Beam effects come in specific beam effects fixtures like the Chauvet LED Mushroom, which features a rotating series of colored lenses mounted in front of an LED light source. The effect created is a cluster of spinning, independent colored beams. Moving heads, like Elation's Beam Design heads, also are capable of producing beam effects. Don’t forget when you consider using a beam effect to consider getting a fog machine, these two effect units go perfectly together! A sub-family of beam effect is moonflower effects and derby effects. A moonflower effect, like that produced by Chauvet’s Vue 4.1 DMX LED, produces many different colored beams that collect on the surface it is directed at and form a pattern. Moonflower fixtures often produce numerous patterns and feature impressive color changing abilities. Derby effects are also another common beam effect. Derby effects feature the creation of many moving beams that can be layered on top of each other to create a multi-color beam effect. The derby effect, like all DJ effects, has a built in microphone that automatically syncs its pattern to your music.

The other main family of DJ effects is barrel and scanner effects. A barrel is usually a rotating cylinder with multiple mirrors to fixed to its exterior that reflects the light shined upon it from the bulb’s lamp. Optima’s Excalibur scanner features a barrel which creates many quickly alternating and rotating beams. Barrel effects also use gobos which are then rotated and use color changing to create a dynamic performance. Scanners create a similar effect and work similarly. Rather than use a rotating barrel, a scanner features a light source that shines on a single mirror which usually features XY rotation or rotation horizontally and vertically.

Of course there are other effects, like blacklights, lasers, snow machines, and bubble machines, which are easily distinguishable from the rest. BulbAmerica has all of these effects in stock and at unbeatable check us out today. Post any questions or comments you have on the blog or our Facebook or call 1-877-622-0897.

Let it Snow with Snow Machines from BulbAmerica

By BulbAmerica Editor

Snow machines are a fantastic lighting effect that rapidly transforms any stage or space into a winter wonderland. There is a blizzard of snow machines to choose from so hopefully this article will help you navigate the options. My favorite snow machines are offered by American DJ and Elation. In particular I like American DJ’s Snow Flurry Snow Machine and Elation’s Silent Snow Effect Machine.American’s DJ’s 2,000 cu. ft./min Snow Flurry has a 2.2L tank capacity to keep you pumping snow for a long time. The Snow Flurry stays cool with its ECO thermal control system so the machine does not overheat; this also ensures the Snow Flurry’s durability. The Snow Flurry also features intelligent pump protection (IPP) so when the machine gets low on fluid, it does not continue to run and damage the machine. The Snow Flurry can be controlled easily with either an included remote control and has adjustable volume level to control the volume of snow produced.

Elation’s Silent Snow is an excellent snow machine option that is great for clubs, theatres, and movie sets. It can produce any amount of snow fall from a light flurry to a steady snow fall. One feature that sets the Silent Snow from American DJ’s snow machine is that the Silent Snow can be controlled via a DMX controller, thus allowing you to integrate it directly into your lighting system. If you do not want to use the Silent Snow with a DMX controller, the Silent Snow comes with a remote control that features a knob that allows you to adjust snow volume as well as an on/off rocker switch. The Silent Snow features the same great construction and performance that all Elation products have, so you know that it is a trustworthy piece of equipment.

BulbAmerica has a great selection of snow machines that will provide your show with a wondrous snow effect. Check out what we have and let it snow!