Adapter for headlight to household plug.

[Fr4nz5]

If anyone could help me, I would like to know what kind of adapter, converters and gauge of cable i would need to plug in a headlight to a regular household AC current(Preferably on a dimmer).

A long time ago, one of the headlights on on a toyota tacoma 98 went out on us. Though I guess we should have swapped both to make them match, my uncle decided to only replace the one that was out. So now I have a headlight exactly like this one: http://www.stylintrucks.com/parts/re...riverside.aspx

Why on earth would I want to do that? I'm a film major focusing on cinematography and I think that this would be a bad ass source of light for my projects.

[shorod]

An automotive headlight is intended to work on 12V (+/- 3V or so) and is direct current. Home power is 120V and is alternating current. For a typical filament bulb, direct current (DC) versus alternating current (AC) won't matter, but the voltage certainly will. At a minimum you'll need a step down transformer with a 10 to 1 turns ratio. It will need to be capable of some pretty good current as well, probably 12 amps to be on the safe side. A hefty transformer like this wouldn't be very inexpensive, plus you'd need a safe housing to install it in, and it will be HEAVY. A better route would be to pick up a switch-mode power supply (SMPS, or "switching" supply). These use a much smaller transformer with FET transistors to step down the voltage and switch it at a fast rate using Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM). These are much more efficient than the large transformer, a lot less weight, and are becoming common enough that the prices are starting to come down. You may be able to find one at a local hobby shop since they are pretty common for the radio control (R/C) world to run battery chargers.

-Rod