Source for Fade-in, fade-out light timer?

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Hey, does anyone know of a source for a good light timer that will gradually fade up and fade down the light? I tried searching on Amazon and virtually everything offered, at first glance, was a whole-house system. I just want to put the full spectrum bulbs on timers that don't startle the birds twice a day by abrubtly going on and off. Are these offered in aviculture catalogs, perhaps?

[Michael]

I have a very simple alternative. 2 lamps/2 timers. I have the distant one go on first, then the closer one. The closer one turns off first, then the distant one in a few minutes. This gives the birds a twilight warning that bed time is coming up.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

For the evening one, we have the overhead on anyway, and typically in the morning there is already light in the room. Even so, the suddenness of the switching startles them, especially Scooter. Not only is it abrubt, but it is actually slightly noisy since I'm using garden variety cheap mechanical timers. Since the full spectrum lamps are supposed to be only about a foot away from the cage for best exposure, I'd really like to be able to make the lighting change more gradual... I've read in parrot magazines you can get these timers...

[lotus15]

I always thought that with fluorescent tubes you cannot use fade-type things anyway?

[Michael]

Not all full spectrum lights are fluorescent.

[lotus15]

In order to produce the UV that is the reason people buy FSL, the light source must be fluorescent.

[Michael]

Full spectrum bulbs come in incandescent and halogen and I believe both can be dimmed:

[lotus15]

Full spectrum is a term that is extremely different when discussed in the lighting industry vs. the bird industry. For lighting it is largely unregulated and simply means full color spectrum of visible light to humans. For birds, full spectrum means that it has the full spectrum of light visible to humans AND birds, which includes UV. A full spectrum light for avian use must have a CRI of at least 93+ and a Kelvin rating between 5000 to 5,500. None of those bulbs would achieve that. Furthermore, compact bulbs, even when rated at that CRI and K, cannot produce UVB because of the lack of surface area -- only a fluorescent tube light provides the right specs and the UV rays that people look for in avian lighting. I know you'll find a ton of compact fluorescent bulbs on the market rated for avian use (like Featherbrite or whatnot) but unfortunately those simply don't cut it. Lighting specialists say that that at best they might produce some UVA but not UVB-- it's not possible due to the physics of the bulb.

[entrancedbymyGCC]

Yes, those two incandescent bulbs are daylight color-balance, not full-spectrum. It essentially filters out the red colors so the light appears to our eyes similar to sunlight. Looks similar to true full spectrum, but is physically quite a lot different.

I don't see why it would be impossible for a CFL to produce a fair distribution across the spectrum. Any fluorescent is going to produce bits and pieces, and it won't be identical to sunlight, but the actual spectrum produced is going to depend on the gasses and coatings in the tube and the excitation of the gasses, not the physical size of the bulb. Since UV is the short end of the spectrum, any effect due to diffraction or so forth would happen on size scales much smaller than the dimensions of the bulb. You need to read the manufacturer's information fairly carefully, but I don't see any reason why physics would argue against it.

Some CFLs appear to dim OK. I guess it might shorten the life of the bulb and the actual emission during the dimming might be flaky, but I really just want to soften the sudden cut-on and cut-off.

[lotus15]

To be honest, I am not an expert on the physics part, but it has to do with the surface area and the phosphor coating of the tube that is lost when you have a CFL. I know all this because I invested a ton of money into CFLs by Avitech and Featherbrite and was very proud of myself and was posting about it on another forum a long while back when I was kindly told that they were a big useless waste of money. I was very dismayed and spoke to the manufacturers who assured me they were not. Went back to the forum, relayed the info, but was still told I was wrong and that if I didn't trust them then to talk to real lighting manufacturers, not ones that are trying to make money off of crazy bird owners (like myself). So that's what I did-- I called and researched a ton of lighting manufacturers who are in the business of making lights and not in the business of making money off of avian lighting and they all confirmed that there is no way a CFL could be useful as an avian lighting solution. After doing more and more research and speaking to various people in the business or long time bird owners... it keeps coming back to this. Which sucks, because I'd much prefer to use CFLs for aesthetic and practical reasons, but that's what I've found to be the plain old truth.