Halloween prop: portable black light
posted Oct 2nd 2009 10:00am by Caleb Kraftfiled under: home hacks, wearable hacks
[Joshua] wrote in to show us this great Halloween tip. He wanted to take his 4 foot long black light along with him on Halloween. You can buy portable versions, but he realized he had enough parts laying around to slap together a portable one himself. He pulled the inverter from a scanner light and wired it up to a couple of 9 volt batteries. Knowing he would probably need a fresh set during the night, he actually wired in some extras with a switch to control which was powering the unit. We know this isn’t the best solution, but you could probably toss this together in just a few minutes.
great quick n’ dirty hack, especially sourcing the inverter!
if someone has more forewarning, 1W UV LEDs are now available for reasonable prices. they’re not super efficient with their wavelength output – a lot in visible deep violet/purple – but they’d probably be way more power efficient, durable, and portable.