Soiled Roots
Member
So it looked as though it would be real easy to add an 'ignitor' to my metal halide ballast and make it capable of using HPS bulbs (the only difference between a metal halide ballast, and a hps ballast, is an ignitor).
Here is where I ran into an issue
the ignitor has 3 wires
2 of the wires goto the socket, and obviously those were easy to find
one of the wires is supposed to attach to the long side of the transformer. my transformer only has one wire coming out of the long side, that wire is going to the capacitor. In the diagrams that i saw @ on line pot dot org, there were two wires coming out of the long side of the transformer. Can anyone help me out here? How can I get this working, I tried splicing the wire that's going to the cap' and it appears to not be working (at least I plugged it in for 30 seconds and nothing happend (no fires either tho so thats good!) Does it take more then a few minutes for an hps bulb to arc or should it be right away - the metal halides arc'd right away.. any help would be appreciated, I been using the metal halide's wanted to try to switch to hps. buying all new ballasts is not an option financially so please don't say 'invest in some better equipment'
I did notice the capacitor seems to be a little different the metal halide cap is 24u the HPS one's seem to be 52u (??) does this make a difference i'm wondering..
Here is where I ran into an issue
the ignitor has 3 wires
2 of the wires goto the socket, and obviously those were easy to find
one of the wires is supposed to attach to the long side of the transformer. my transformer only has one wire coming out of the long side, that wire is going to the capacitor. In the diagrams that i saw @ on line pot dot org, there were two wires coming out of the long side of the transformer. Can anyone help me out here? How can I get this working, I tried splicing the wire that's going to the cap' and it appears to not be working (at least I plugged it in for 30 seconds and nothing happend (no fires either tho so thats good!) Does it take more then a few minutes for an hps bulb to arc or should it be right away - the metal halides arc'd right away.. any help would be appreciated, I been using the metal halide's wanted to try to switch to hps. buying all new ballasts is not an option financially so please don't say 'invest in some better equipment'
I did notice the capacitor seems to be a little different the metal halide cap is 24u the HPS one's seem to be 52u (??) does this make a difference i'm wondering..
