LED precision lighting for haunted houses

[thrilltainment]

Hi everyone,

We developed our own unique LED lighting system during our production of Shanghai Nightmare 2009. Now we're making it available to the public in mid 2010. We offer close range spotlights, flood lights, and even high power LED spotlights at very competitive prices.

Best of all, our lights are very easy to install since you never have to worry about mixing up (+) or (-) terminals, just connect them and they light up!

Come check out our website at http://darklight.e5design.com

We'll be at Transworld for our product launch, come check it out!

Cheers,
Quan
E5 Design Inc.

[thrilltainment]

Darklight intro video

for those who haven't seen the live demo at TransWorld, here it is:

[thrilltainment]

Darklight is proud to announce that all Precision lights (X,Y, and Z) models are now made water resistant (IP63) and are fully usable in outdoor applications (yards, trails, corn mazes, etc...).

http://darklight.e5design.com

[thrilltainment]

Product Photos

All photos below were taken with the same exposure time and ISO settings. A 1 foot ruler is provided for scale reference. More photos of our products are available here: http://www.e5design.com/darklight



Precision X 2 feet away from object


Precision Y 2 feet away from object


Precision Z 2 feet away from object


Precision Z 5 feet away from object

[thrilltainment]

a pictureis worth 1000 words

a couple more photos of our products in action.

[thrilltainment]

World's Smallest Full Color DMX Wash Light

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Now in stock!

we just received our new stock of Precision Z lights in 15 degree, 120 degree, and Line beam angles!
if you want to see them in person, just attend any of the following shows later this year:

1. HauntCon
2. National Haunters
3. Westcoast Haunters
4. MuseumExpo
5. Midwest Haunters
6. American Science & Tech Center
7. IAAPA

[thrilltainment]

Universal Orlando

if anyone's in Orlando during October, you can see our products used in Halloween Horror Nights at Universal.

[dlstorminc]

Hi,

nice products. I have a question. What makes your product better then say, building your own LED lighting system? I have been working with LEDs off and on since high school days (Over 23 years now) and to me at least it is not that hard to make a LED unit for lighting to do what I need it to do. Why would I pay $26 to $50 or more for your units when I could build my own? not trying to be smart, just asking. To me, with the costs of LEDs being so low priced, I am a bit surprised more people and haunters are not making their own LED lighting. Maybe most haunts have money to burn (?) or they don't have the knowledge to build their own LED lighting. Sure, sometimes it is safer to buy the light then try to build your own, more so if your going to kill yourself trying or burn the place down. You can find good learning tuts on Youtube about LEDs and how to build them. Thanks for the info and still, you offer a great product.

Will

[thrilltainment]

Excellent questions, here's why.

Hi,

nice products. I have a question. What makes your product better then say, building your own LED lighting system? I have been working with LEDs off and on since high school days (Over 23 years now) and to me at least it is not that hard to make a LED unit for lighting to do what I need it to do. Why would I pay $26 to $50 or more for your units when I could build my own? not trying to be smart, just asking. To me, with the costs of LEDs being so low priced, I am a bit surprised more people and haunters are not making their own LED lighting. Maybe most haunts have money to burn (?) or they don't have the knowledge to build their own LED lighting. Sure, sometimes it is safer to buy the light then try to build your own, more so if your going to kill yourself trying or burn the place down. You can find good learning tuts on Youtube about LEDs and how to build them. Thanks for the info and still, you offer a great product.

Will

Thanks for asking this question, many people have asked us this over the years so this is a good place for us to answer a very common question:

Most people who make their own LEDs are dealing with the low wattage 5mm LEDs, those are super cheap, perhaps ~ $0.25 per light, you add some resistors, and a power supply and you get going... great. I've even made a cheap version of a "mini pinspot" by having a cheap LED + resistor + paperclip + heatstrink =) it works.

However, when people are looking for more light output out of LED technology, the waters get deep, VERY quickly. High powered LEDs get hot and need proper thermal management in order to not cook itself. Thermal management means high efficiency in the drivers and good heat sinks. The components for high power LEDs is no longer as simple as a resistor + LED, it's more like a mini computer switching power supply + LED.

To get deeper into the technical stuff, your standard low voltage power supply gives you 12V... your actual LED only needs about 3V. What are you doing with that extra 9V? In cheap homemade LEDs, you're usually burning that off as heat through a resistor. That's OK when you're using a small 1/16 watt LED (20mA, 5mm LED). Now if you used a 1W LED (or brighter) and dropped 9V through a resistor, you're BURNING 3W off as heat... so you end up having a 4W device with only 1W becoming light. That's TERRIBLE efficiency (only 25%) and a LOT of heat that will cook your LED in a few hours or days. With a switching power supply, you're about 80-95% efficient. The low heat output and better efficiency of a professional LED spotlight will allow the product to last over many many seasons, 50,000 hours minimum rating.

not to mention, when you hook up these high powered spotlights, they are so bright that you only need 1 or 2 per scene, instead of 10 small home made lights... imagine how much time you'll save from all that wiring and fussing.

- Homemade LEDs are typically not weather protected, our products are all sealed (potted circuit boards) and some are even submersible.
- Homemade LEDs have bare wire connectors, you have to solder or tape lots of wires together to get it working, our products are plug and play and have built in terminal blocks
- Homemade LEDs don't work when you plug them in reverse. Our LEDs are dual polarity, so you can't get the black and red wiring wrong... if you wire up enough lights in the dark, you'll probably get a few hooked up in reverse, you don't have to worry about that with our product
- Homemade LEDs aren't always approved by your fire marshal, depending on how much they like you.... our products are UL listed, the haunt owner has a piece of mind that the lighting will not only perform well but will be approved by their local authorities.
- Homemade LEDs don't always hold up well to abuse from installation and customer interaction, our products get dropped and stepped on and survive because they are machined aluminum fixtures. We have installations where people just pot the product into concrete... If they want to move it, they chisel out the fixture.
- Homemade LEDs aren't trusted by all the major theme parks because they aren't designed to endure 365 operation over 10+ years... we sell to Disney, Universal, Six Flags, Cedar Fair, Sea World, and most of the well known haunts in this market because the product is designed for professionals.

so all in all... it's really like comparing a Huffy bike to a Tesla Roadster (noticed I picked an electric car for comparison ;-) )... they will both get you places, but one of them does a heck of a better job at doing it.

if someone tries to actually hand build a product comparable in features and output as what we offer, they'll quickly realize the cost effectiveness of our products and that it actually takes an engineering degree to build professional LED systems. In many other markets (theatrical, architectural, theme parks, museums), our products are actually considered very inexpensive.

I hope this response is thorough enough to explain why many professionals rather purchase our products than to build their own...

[dlstorminc]

Thanks for asking this question, many people have asked us this over the years so this is a good place for us to answer a very common question:

Most people who make their own LEDs are dealing with the low wattage 5mm LEDs, those are super cheap, perhaps ~ $0.25 per light, you add some resistors, and a power supply and you get going... great. I've even made a cheap version of a "mini pinspot" by having a cheap LED + resistor + paperclip + heatstrink =) it works.

However, when people are looking for more light output out of LED technology, the waters get deep, VERY quickly. High powered LEDs get hot and need proper thermal management in order to not cook itself. Thermal management means high efficiency in the drivers and good heat sinks. The components for high power LEDs is no longer as simple as a resistor + LED, it's more like a mini computer switching power supply + LED.

To get deeper into the technical stuff, your standard low voltage power supply gives you 12V... your actual LED only needs about 3V. What are you doing with that extra 9V? In cheap homemade LEDs, you're usually burning that off as heat through a resistor. That's OK when you're using a small 1/16 watt LED (20mA, 5mm LED). Now if you used a 1W LED (or brighter) and dropped 9V through a resistor, you're BURNING 3W off as heat... so you end up having a 4W device with only 1W becoming light. That's TERRIBLE efficiency (only 25%) and a LOT of heat that will cook your LED in a few hours or days. With a switching power supply, you're about 80-95% efficient. The low heat output and better efficiency of a professional LED spotlight will allow the product to last over many many seasons, 50,000 hours minimum rating.

not to mention, when you hook up these high powered spotlights, they are so bright that you only need 1 or 2 per scene, instead of 10 small home made lights... imagine how much time you'll save from all that wiring and fussing.

- Homemade LEDs are typically not weather protected, our products are all sealed (potted circuit boards) and some are even submersible.
- Homemade LEDs have bare wire connectors, you have to solder or tape lots of wires together to get it working, our products are plug and play and have built in terminal blocks
- Homemade LEDs don't work when you plug them in reverse. Our LEDs are dual polarity, so you can't get the black and red wiring wrong... if you wire up enough lights in the dark, you'll probably get a few hooked up in reverse, you don't have to worry about that with our product
- Homemade LEDs aren't always approved by your fire marshal, depending on how much they like you.... our products are UL listed, the haunt owner has a piece of mind that the lighting will not only perform well but will be approved by their local authorities.
- Homemade LEDs don't always hold up well to abuse from installation and customer interaction, our products get dropped and stepped on and survive because they are machined aluminum fixtures. We have installations where people just pot the product into concrete... If they want to move it, they chisel out the fixture.
- Homemade LEDs aren't trusted by all the major theme parks because they aren't designed to endure 365 operation over 10+ years... we sell to Disney, Universal, Six Flags, Cedar Fair, Sea World, and most of the well known haunts in this market because the product is designed for professionals.

so all in all... it's really like comparing a Huffy bike to a Tesla Roadster (noticed I picked an electric car for comparison ;-) )... they will both get you places, but one of them does a heck of a better job at doing it.

if someone tries to actually hand build a product comparable in features and output as what we offer, they'll quickly realize the cost effectiveness of our products and that it actually takes an engineering degree to build professional LED systems. In many other markets (theatrical, architectural, theme parks, museums), our products are actually considered very inexpensive.

I hope this response is thorough enough to explain why many professionals rather purchase our products than to build their own...

Thanks for the answer.

[thrilltainment]

updated video for Precision Alpha

this is by far our most popular product for the Halloween industry, if you or anyone you know are still using par-cans in your haunt, THIS will replace it. Lasts much longer, UL listed, low voltage, indoor and outdoors.