Hi

Can someone help me remake sounds of fluorescent starter chimes and 50hZ ballast hum? I have no idea on how to create similar sounds. I am just considering to make an animation with fluorescent lights turning on (and perhaps an EOL lamp). Any help would be appreciated. And of course I can use ready sound effects as well 

Also, any help with the animation itself is appreciated. I will probably be using Blender as it's free. But no hurries, as my current laptop can't run Blender that well (I'm saving for a more powerful computer).

Get an eol tube and a noisy starter. Record the sounds along with the ballast hum. If you are wanting to make multiple (like a room full) record multiple startups of the lamp (maybe different starter) and change loudness (amplitude) and overlay them. That should get you a decent sound.

Yeah, that could work. But there is one thing... I don't have such a good microphone. I have a microphone on my phone and it always picks up some background sounds. But of course there are many tools to remove background sounds...

They're fairly quiet sounds, recording them is indeed not too easy unless you already have a proper portable recorder like the ones from Zoom or Roland.

If you don't need them urgently, i can make a few tries. I tried with a contact microphone and i instantly run into two problems: RF clicks from the starter, and inductively coupled hum from the ballast. So the only option would be to use a well shielded condenser/electret microphone, because a dynamic will gladly pick up the magnetic field from the ballast. I do have one, but i need to set up everything outside of the room with my computer. But that's exactly where all my lighting stuff is.

I don't have any EOL tubes. I can make them plink a few times if i lower the input voltage to 190v or so, but they start annoyingly easy.