Rewiring maintained emergency lights be non emergency!

spynage · Dec 6, 2022

Hi

So I'd like a maintained emergency light but without the automatic emergency function to trigger in the event of power failure. In other words I'd like a light connected to the mains that has a battery back up in the event of a power failure but I don't want it to come on automatically. Only for my convenience.

Do you think this would be easy to achieve with a standard maintained emergency light? What kind of rewiring would you anticipate that I would have to do?

Cheers

Spynage

NB. Thinking about this some more this is potentially quite an obvious fix, but i'd like to hear your thought anyway. Cheers!

Fazz711 · Dec 6, 2022

Usually has two live connections.
One perm one switched.
In maintained they will be linked.
Remove the link and run switched live to the connection marked switched live

James · Dec 6, 2022

I don’t know of any emergency light fitting that you can force to be off in the event of a power failure.
obviously there are ways to do it but not with an unmodified off the shelf unit.

SJD · Dec 6, 2022

James said:
I don’t know of any emergency light fitting that you can force to be off in the event of a power failure.
obviously there are ways to do it but not with an unmodified off the shelf unit.

I have a 3hr EM light in my garage, and have always thought it would be a bit of a waste after a power cut to burn through the 3hrs of light when I only need to go in there now and again to retrieve the candles, generator, etc. It would be far more useful to me to have the EM light function on a switch.

Fazz711 · Dec 6, 2022

I miss read that.
What you can do is take the wires going from the pcb to the battery and put a switch on the live.

Just done something similar with a scrap twin spot that mate wants to use in his garage.
He can charge it up at home then when he needs it switch on and with no supply it will light up

SJD · Dec 6, 2022

If the battery is to be kept charged, it needs to remain connected, rather than switched. The output from the battery to the driver perhaps needs switching. All using the one switch to turn the light on/off during normal (mains powered) operation.

spynage · Dec 6, 2022

SJD said:
If the battery is to be kept charged, it needs to remain connected, rather than switched. The output from the battery to the driver perhaps needs switching. All using the one switch to turn the light on/off during normal (mains powered) operation.

Thanks. That's basically what I concluded whilst writing my post. Now I'm thinking though why do I need to but an emergency light unit anyway? It would be fairly straightforward to build something like that with a far greater battery life.

DPG · Dec 6, 2022

spynage said:
Thanks. That's basically what I concluded whilst writing my post. Now I'm thinking though why do I need to but an emergency light unit anyway? It would be fairly straightforward to build something like that with a far greater battery life.

Just keep a decent LED torch or lamp handy with some fresh (non rechargeable) batteries in it. Get a lot more than 30 mins use out of it.

Fazz711 · Dec 6, 2022

What is it you want to light up?,

littlespark · Dec 7, 2022

Put the switch on the output leads from the pcb to the plate with the LEDs on it.

Battery remains connected, remains charging.

You’ll get a better light from LED than old T8 tube and cheap as chips nowadays.

spynage · Dec 8, 2022

Hi.

Can I expect any problems from swapping the batteries in the light? I'm hoping that all that happens is the battery takes proportionately longer to charge up. Or will it stress and overheat the charging transformer?

They are both 3.6 v units.

Thanks

spynage · Dec 8, 2022

littlespark said:
Put the switch on the output leads from the pcb to the plate with the LEDs on it.

Battery remains connected, remains charging.

You’ll get a better light from LED than old T8 tube and cheap as chips nowadays.

Yeah did that. I used bell wire. Little tricky to terminate though. Works well enough at the moment. It seemed to turn itself off at first after a while of not being on but keeping the connection in L-SL seems to correct it.

Rewiring maintained emergency lights be non emergency!

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