Display lighting, LED question

[sycor]

I have a display case that I would like to add some lights to. Normally it uses plug-in halogen lights but where I was forced to put it the room, there is no outlet near it. So I was thinking about adding a couple small strips of LEDs to the top. The only issues is powering them. Would something like a battery bank for a phone work? Just use the USB out and wire it in to the lights? Is there a better battery option that I'm not considering?

 

[thepoynt]

If you buy a LED strip made for running on 5V, then yes, a phone battery bank would work great. Using that myself in a project soon.
Just know that it won't last long, so you'll have to manually turn it on when you want to be displaying stuff and remember to turn it off when you're "done".

I'd only do it as a last resort, after exhausting all ways of getting an extension cord to the display...

 

[Pro Mod]

It's perfectly possible to run Led's using batteries, its just a case of how long you'd like them to run and how much space you have to hide the battery.
You can use packs of AA batteries, alarm batteries, drill batteries and even car batteries depending on the power consumption and duration of operation. This is part of an illuminated award we built and uses two sets of standard battery packs. The sixteen batteries ran for more than thirteen hours without a noticable drop in brighness.

 

[sycor]

Yeah I was a little concerned about the life of the battery but I probably won't be running the lights for more than a few hours at a time. I'll give the phone bank a try and if that doesn't work well enough then I'll try a larger battery pack. Pro Mod Thanks for the suggestions.

thepoynt Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately running an extension cord just not possible in the room. The closest outlet is on the other side of a fireplace so there is no way to hide it and I can't run it that close to the fire. Otherwise it would have to run all the way down a hall to another room. (Being in an apartment kind of limits my options.)