How do *you* light your pit?

[MrForbes]

Lately when I need more light to see something, I just ask a student to get out a phone and light up the area of interest. The students don't seem to need more light...only us old mentors, with failing eyesight.

[Dwight_2]

Originally Posted by Billfred

Iron Kings have been working on their pit area this off-season, and it's obvious that our setup would benefit from more lighting.

The pit was about the size of an FRC crate on its side, split down the long way on a hinge. We've cut down one of those halves to table height for an additional work surface, and the plan is to build storage and a charging station underneath. (We're still deciding if we want or need the other side--not being able to drag more crap to an event may be addition by subtraction.)

LED strip lighting seems like the obvious answer for the storage portion, but I'd like to know what other teams have tried for both storage and working spaces. What worked, or just as important what didn't work?

I personally haven't dealt with pit lighting I tried to convince my team about getting some last year (our rookie year) however funding wasn't best for it. But one of our good friends and travel mates team 5816 (GRA-V) had a great idea of using I believe LED spotlights, like those you can mount on the top of your car, and they would run the set of four mounted above their pit off of two extra robot batteries and charge those overnight.Idk where they got them but LED car lights aren't a bad idea because they already 12v and you could easily use a battery or inverter plugged into a power strip to power them.

[RoboChair]

Matches were involved.... I'm legally not allowed to say more...


But we use LED strips.

[soundfx]

Originally Posted by Dwight_2

I personally haven't dealt with pit lighting I tried to convince my team about getting some last year (our rookie year) however funding wasn't best for it. But one of our good friends and travel mates team 5816 (GRA-V) had a great idea of using I believe LED spotlights, like those you can mount on the top of your car, and they would run the set of four mounted above their pit off of two extra robot batteries and charge those overnight.Idk where they got them but LED car lights aren't a bad idea because they already 12v and you could easily use a battery or inverter plugged into a power strip to power them.

+1 to Dwight. Our team mounted four LED spotlights to the corners of our pit structure last year since our pit had walls that blocked out a lot of light. Even when the light from above would have been enough to work in, the extra light was awesome to have in the pit and really helped to see things normally covered by shadows. We wired the lights through some sort of inverter or power supply (I'm not sure what exactly) and had no need to charge them, either.

[Jonny_Jee]

I use 6ft LED tube normally used for commercial refrigerators(think grocery store coolers). The are stupid bright and it's really easily to make a fixture for them and with a couple of tombstone connectors, easy to hook up(no ballast required). I used to work as a commercial refrigeration technician during my summers throughout high school and we used these for everything.

[tiernan12992]

In our case, we have a set of fluorescent lights that go around our pit, hanging above us and shining light down onto the workstations below us. We mostly do this to avoid having shadows be a big problem while we are working.

[bobbysq]

We haven't really had any issues with pit lighting either. I guess if you wanted to see under tables and such, some standard cabinet lighting solutions would work.

[Mcomer]

I highly recommend 4' shop light fixtures with T8 LED bulbs that run around $7 in local stores. The LEDs are in durable plastic tubes and offer great lighting in the pit area with low wattage use. First few years we had a yard tent structure with florescent bulbs in the fixtures. We accidentally broke a tube and do not recommend their use. We now have 1 fixture mounted to each side of the pit structure with 2 LED bulbs each. No shadows! No hot bulbs. The bright lights makes work easier and safer in the pit. It also draws attention to your team. You just never know who will stop by your pit....

[mman1506]

I bought one of these 4' LED shop lights for my shop recently and I love it. Because it's a dedicated LED fixture it is super lightweight and could easily be attached to a structure with zipties. There is also no glass to break and it's super bright.

When I joined my team we had dark navy blue curtains surrounding 3 sides of our pit and it made things impossible to work in. Even though the top was uncovered it cut out a huge amount of light and made the space feel much more cramped than necessary. I strongly recommend open minimalist pit structures as they are not only easier to work in but create a more inviting presence for other teams.

[fargus111111111]

343 uses position-able small spot lights that are hung from the shelf that goes up to about the 10 ft height over our table space and we have been very pleased for many years with those. I do not know when they were put on there, but I have never heard anyone complain about not having enough light. The only real complaint we have had with them over the years is that, because of how we load the pit into our trailer, if the bulbs don't get pointed back to the inside of the pit they are likely to hit the wall and break. Also because they are incandescent bulbs they do get quite hot, but that could made much better with LED bulbs.

Edit: they are track lights that can swivel and tilt