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It's working!!
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My Globe Electric emergency light from 1997, featuring the classic Globe Electric logo, now works!
After hours of troubleshooting and lots of new things learned, I found out that many emergency light fixtures act like mine did when there is no battery or the latter is shot. I made a crude 500mA 6V supply with two wallwart power supplies and I plugged this setup to the B+ and B- terminals of the circuit board, where the battery goes. I plugged the circuit to 120V to activate all the parts of the circuit, then I turned off the 120V, leaving the 6V power supply connected and CLICK, the lights turned on!
Since the 6V supply could only provide 500mA, both lights would light kinda dim, and the voltage drop was just low enough to keep the circuit working. If it's too low, the relay rattles wildly, then gets slower and slower until the lamps fade out XD. With one lamp removed the remaining lamp lights up almost at full brightness, and even with the ceiling lights on, the spot cast by the lamp was clearly visible! I expect excellent performances of the two lamps during a real power outage!
I only need a 6V 4.5aH lead-acid battery and it's ready to go! This is the final location of the fixture, in front of the electronics area of the shop. Maybe I'm gonna place a piece of drywall behind to give the setup some realism LOL.
The piece of LVT wire sticking out is for the future addition of a remote emergency light head that's going to be installed where this fixture used to be. The remote head will be connected in parallel with the two lamps of the main unit pictured here, and will light the main area of the shop. With three emergency lamps on two fixtures, I'm not going to be thrown in complete darkness as I did last November XD.
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Looks similar to the one I had that failed for some reason
I wonder how long these would stay on after a power outage...
Globe 32602 emergency light. Mine is in fact rated 2 hours with two lamps and four hours with one lamp.
Another thing I forgot to add. The original red AC power LED indicator looked terribly ugly, so I removed it and soldered a green/red LED from a TV circuit board. The red positive lead has been left unsoldered obviously LOL. Interestingly that LED also acts as a test button!