Part 15 Radio Do It Yourself Projects
An On-Air Studio Light
By Daniel Bemis - Radio StrangeOk, this project is more a *part* of studio construction or a studio accessory.
One of the things that always kind of goes with a radio station in movies and etc is the "On Air" light. Now, since I hobbycast from the kitchen (which is one of the main family rooms for my household) an indicator of when I've switched on the mic or am about to switch it on would be good. As opposed to just saying "mic live in 10 sec".
I'll still have to do the verbal warning, of course, but we decided a small "On Air" light would be nice to have. Problem is, for such a simple thing, they run a few bucks and none of the ones I saw for sale really had the right feel for Radio Strange. So I and my daughter decided to build one. My daughter is a junior in high-school and an artist. Since she draws manga/cartoon/comix, she said it'd be no problem coming up with a bit of custom lettering that had an appropriately crazed sort of look to it.
Considerations were that I wanted the light to be small, since our studio (not counting the computer) can fit on as little as half a desk. No point having a light bigger than the mixing panel, for example. So I found a little "shadowbox" type frame at a dollar store and got some red "tail-light lens repair tape" for the letters that are supposed to light up and figured we'd use black electrician's tape for the black part (guess that was kind of obvious, huh?).
All art credits for the project go to my daughter, who prefers to be known as "The Queen of Oblivion" in regards to her time on the air and mentions on radio boards and etc. She sat down with paper and drew up 4 different ideas. We were in agreement as to which one fits our station best, so she set about taping and cutting with an exacto knife while I worked on figuring out a light source that wouldn't pose any sort of fire hazard and etc...
I decided to light it with a couple of those little battery op lights for cabinets that usually work with a magnet and reed switch. You know, the sort that stick in with double-sided tape and run off three button cells that cost more to replace than the whole light cost? The voltage those take was handy to my plan for the light and what the heck, better to use them in projects than just throw them out when the batteries die.. so this is what it looks like lit up..
Ok, so how the voltage they need is "handy for my plan".. Each of the two little lights use three 1.5v button cells. 4.5 volts. So stringing the two units in series makes a lighting circuit that takes 9 volts. Now, the little portable I use as my air monitor (and to drive headphones when we turn down the monitor speakers and turn on a mic) happens to be 9 volts. So running the light circuit in parallel to the little portable, all I need to do is use one small 9v power supply and a small switch to turn both of them on and off at the same time.
Functional enough for our little studio and easy enough to switch to battery as backup in an emergency or blackout.
Besides that, it was a fun/nifty project and a neat little toy/accessory for our station.
I'm debating either building some sort of a small panel with the switch on it (and to hide the little portable receiver) or maybe going with a footswitch to free up hands for faders and headphones when switching over to mic.
©2009 Daniel Bemis