I agree with yours, what an amazing "Pocket" plasma ball!.
I figure these have built-in a kind of converter not so different from those that compact fluorescent lamps does use, but whose output transformer has a secondary winding fitted with a number of turns noticeably greater than those found into regular CFL's in order to generate a higher voltage to properly ionizing the gas mixture within the globe.
After all, both kind of lamps uses RF energy to create a plasma discharge into the tube, only the voltage are different for each application.
I would be interested about to know if anyone are manufacturing such a devices for use in continental Europe at 220-230 volts/50 Hz, fitted with E27 or E14 Edison caps.
In any case, a standard plasma-ball rated? 110-130 volts for US market could be useful for me, because the fact that I have no problem to use 125 volts in many rooms at home, via a bulky step-down self-transformer that I've permanently installed that feeds a dedicated line for these voltage through almost the whole ground floor.
Only the compatibility between mains frequencies could be a problem if such a bulb are only 60 Hz rated, because as you knows here we have a mains frequency of 50 Hz (Xformers does not convert frequency
).
Furthermore, E26 bases are practically interchangeable with our E27 ones withouth any problem.
The only remaining difficulty are the availability of such lamps at our markets or how to order one of them overseas. BTW, Chinese lamps are nowadays very common here, and given the fact that their electric systems are the same that here in Europe, perhaps would be more easy than I though to find such? plasma-balls rated for our own standards.
In any case, I have not yet seen them here.
Thanks in advance, best regards and Happy Holidays!
M. Gonz?lez.
