Used 8 hours per day in my bedroom for general illumination. Suppresses melatonin excretion with optimum efficiency, long lifetime, high CRI, multiply redundant and cheap.

Nice use of splitters!

I wasn't willing to use HID due to long hours spent there (safety). The cumulative risk of spending 8 hours every day under an unshielded MH in a small room full of flamables without an extinguisher was too much. Shrouded arc-tube versions come only in standard ugly 65 CRI sodium-scandium chemistry (yellowish).

10K+ Aquarium MHs NEVER have shrouds; after years of online searching I've given up. Plus even those have poor CRIs.

In a room with flammables? Watch out, when one of these CFLs start smoking out, LOL.

Those sodium-scandium MH lamps really don't look bad at all, I use them often for interior lighting. The CMH lamps are better CRI and can be had in a nice white color, and yes they are available with arc tube shrouds too.

Yes the CFL with base going upward tend to catch fire mostly on EOL while base up or close enough to be base up like the pic above....Although this looks nice here, only if they weren't "Dangerous" I would do it with all magnetic CFL!

Oh yes, magnetic CFLs! Another possibility is Megaman or IKEA CFLs, or Panasonic Light Capsules, with the best option being some F54T5HO linear fluorescents.

Could do that with SL*18s but the weight might become an issue.

LOL. Good idea... As I have about 15 magnetic ballasted Philips SL*'s I'm planning to connect them all together on a lighting-chain. Seeing all starting together must be great fun...

Try not to pull the light off the ceiling prismatic!

Use Philips Marathons...the old mid 90s Philips were VERY good!

I counted 11 Y-splitter

The heavily-weighted splitters are tied together with white zip-strips (can't be seen in photo), so they can hold a lot of weight. Multiple redundant zip-strips, that is - heavy duty ones.

Also, do NOT use the cheapo splitters without a full internal metal shell. Those cheapo splitters just have partial plastic threads and I found bulbs easily wiggle out of them.

So the splitters I use have a FULL metal threaded shell inside, double-riveted to the base. They are super-cheap at the local used store.

One of the great advantages of this cluster design is it can be:

1. Reshaped as needed to alter the light distribution

2. Enlarged/Reduced by adding/removing splitters & bulbs.

3. Gradually implemented on a tight budget one splitter at a time.

4. Recolorized by changing the color temperature of one or more cells. Because the cells are so close, a mix of CCTs can yield a nice average for the entire unit, producing an in-between CCT like 4600K or 5300K.

Yeah, all it needs is better CFLs, like those Philips ones Jace mentioned, or the Megaman ones, the spirals still need improvement but they are so cheaply made they sometimes like to catch fire or shoot sparks out the side, etc.

Can we see a picture of this nice lighting source lit-up?

I'll post one today - it's difficult because the lit-up photos look all washed-out.

It reminds me to those amino acid structures.

It's orgasmically organic, as intended. My current version is using 17x23W 6500K CFLs totalling 391W. I wrapped blue transparencies around them - one on each - to raise the color temperature to about 15,000K. It's beautiful and keeps me sharp & awake while minimizing glare on the PC screen.

Superfire!

LOL it does look sorta like one of those chemistry models (think if those were colored CFL's )

If your going for brightness, why not just use some 4' fluorescent fixtures

what's so Orgasmically Organic about abunch of CFL's?

Their shape and the brain fx too!