I´m going to build a homemade 4 foot light rail. So far all I have are ideals. The drawing I attached kinda shows what I´m thinking of.

Basicly what I´ve got here is about a five foot peice of metal"like they put road sings on or something" I´m thinkin of mounting a geared down motor on one side that would power a belt drive type system with pullies. I´ll have the light hooked up to a wheel that rides freely in the track of that 5 foot peice of metal. I´ll attach a strong rubberband or something from the belt to the wheel/pully holding the light. This would allow the belt to be able to keep running in the same direction all the time. The rubber band would have to have a swivel on it so that it wouldn´t twist up. Another thing about this system that just happens to work out great is the pause at each end of the track. As any grower knows,,, if you don´t have a pause at each end of the light track/rail all the plants in the middle will get a shitload more light than the ones on the edges. Anyway the pully rubberband system naturally allows that pause to take place. At each end of the run the rubber band will stop pulling the light and as it passes around the pully the light is just sitting still. The rubberband then comes off the pully and startes to move the other way and the light still sits still till the rubber band takes up the slack. I don´t know exactly how good this is gonna work or if it´ll work at all. The MAIN reason I´m posting this thread is because it seems to me that a good quality light rail can be homemade and you actually get the pauses at the ends of the rails. I know this plan is full of stupid ideals that can be vastly inproved on.... PLEASE DO...I need all the help I can get. If nuthin else I plan on building a proto of this thing. As far as powering this unit.... I´m thinking about checking out some battery powered cars and trucks. Those are always geared down and the motors are pretty powerfull for the 4.5 to 6 volts of power they use. and to hell with buying batteries when all you have to do is drop by radio shack for a converter that cost as much as one set of batteries.

PS::: I was very stoned when this was written and when the idea was conceived... please be kind...lol

My first thing im going to say is how well do you know electronics. If you don't know that much your better off trying something else. Remember, the more parts something has the more things there is to break. And if a part breaks your plants will suffer from it until it is fixed, which will take time fix. I personilly think your better off getting more lights to provide constant light over each area of your plants.

I see a hard time getting the right tension on the rubber band.
Maybe chain would work better, instead of a belt. If you can do it, build a timer circuit and have mechanical switch's at the ends of the run. It would be designed to turn the motor off when the light trips the switch. After a period of time, the timer then starts the motor again.
Have you thought about using roller skate wheels? they're already in a carriage assembly, and the wheels are easy rolling too.
Check out how a garage door opener moves, might give you some other idea's.

Good Luck!

I like the roller skate idea. Thanx. As far as the electronic goes... that's gonna be the easy part. And I think I may just use a third pully hooked to a spring to hold the tension. Thanx for the responces.

Those battery powered cars are also very noisy, since they use plastic gears. I think it is a better idea to use an old tape deck mechanism. The older one use high quality metal gears and rubber pullies and are very quiet.
You can check out this site:

http://www.electronickits.com

It has bunch of electric motors and reducers to make robots and other devices.

Hi

I'm not trying to rag on your idea. Hey, some of my best ideas have been while I've been floating on a cloud, if you know what I mean.

Your ideas sounds alot like a garage door opener. The type that you could find at Sears or Home Depot. Do you think that you would be able to modify one of these into a light rail? Just trying to help.

Take care.

i think that ther are a million ways to make it work but a hydrolic pump and side shift cycliner off an old junk fork lift anlong with a power supply to run the pump . used in congunction with some angle iron and some skateboard wheels would be kinda easy to build . you could use a timer to trigger the pump or a limit switch and a relay to swich direction. if you got some money i could build you one. rember the less parts the better... Less is more and thats all i got to say about that ..
'

I hate to cut down "Enginuity" because an imagination is a wonderful thing, but sometimes you got to break down and buy the real thing. At times after a "project" is completed I realize more time and money went into the thing than if I had gone out and bought it. A light mover could be one of those cases.

Hydraulics would be very quiet, it wouldn't have to be as big as something from a forklift though.
It would be easier to buy one, but then you wouldn't have the fun, and sense of accomplishment of designing and building your own.
Look into a stepper motor for robotics, precise control and quiet.
Here's an idea, why not build the motor assembly to ride on top of the rail. The motor driving a wheel riding on the light rail, and the light attached to the motor assembly. This eliminates the need for a belt, or chain to pull the light along on the rail.