I was toying with the idea of purchasing a battlelight, i like to game in the dark, but i also like my desk to be illuminated enough to see the keyboard properly. My keyboard is backlit, which means i can see which key is which but it just doesn't cut it. I want more light focussed on my desk and keyboard area without the room being drowned in light. I also like the new LCD TV's which have backlighting.
The choice was simple enough, either cough up ~£20 for a battlelight or build my own using spare parts i had lying around.
The ingredients:
2 x cold cathode tubes
1 x 12v power inverter
1 x simple switch
1 x molex connector (a fan one preferable)
A soldering iron
Double sided mounting tape
Electrical Tape
I had a couple of cold cathode kits lying around that had been used in other PC's, i had to butcher them so i could use the double socket power inverter to connect two cathode tubes, but also the switch with from the single socket power inverter kit.
When i had the parts i soldered the new leads to the PCB on the power inverter, i then split the live wire and connected the switch. Once everything was soldered in place i covered each of the joins with electrical tape. Proper job !
When done the finished product looked like this:
Then i fired up the PC switched on the battlelight and basked in the glow!
More images can be found here if your interested.


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