Easy LED strips

I was building a small light-up prop for a tv show last week. Was talking about it with a friend and he suggested I use a led strip and gave me one for testing. Fell in love with it! Adhesive-backed, you can cut it yourself and takes anything between 6 and 12 V. Nothing more than connect the battery and thats it. Highly recommended for prop building. You can get it here:

ParaGrafix™ Modeling Systems

Just a heads up for those who havent used it.

 

I love this stuff. Save yourself a ton of money and buy it by the reel on the bay. Search 5050 300 to ensure you get the 300 LED version and not the 150 count. RGB isn't much more.

Under $30 for 15 feet from China

 

Perfect! Thanks. I feel this is definitely something one's gotta have on hand. Good thing I didnt order any yet!

But I have the sudden urge to stick LEDs everywhere!

 

Matt put these to good use:

http://www.therpf.com/f12/my-home-porno-leds-deployed-129540/

 

I love these great finds and think it is great when people share them thank you.

 

The porno lights are great!

I have found too many places to install these around the house...

 

Heh, I used those all over my bike at Burning Man...


The white ones in the wheels are the 300 count, the blue ones on the frame are 150 count color-changing RGB. You can change the color (or have it cycle) via a small remote control (you can also dim them). Even at Burning Man people were impressed. :cool

 

I installed these in my kitchen... They make it nice and pretty - but I honestly hardly ever use them.

 

Dang that's cool stuff. Off to the bay it is then!

 

Thomas, LEDs or not, I want your kitchen! Really nice! And good taste in chairs...

 

How thick and flexable is this stuff?

Do you think it could be sewn into the hem of a hooded robe?

I'm doing a costume next that has glowing runes along the seams, including around the hood. I've been trying to find a way to light the rune letters with EL Wire or EL Tape, but that much EL Tape would get prohibative (Tape seemts to be about $9.00/ft, I'd need at least 13 feet, too much for my budget with everything else the outfit needs).

I have a hunch this stuff might be too stiff, but if not...Score!

 

Cool interior design uses...

 

So how are these powered? I see that they typically take 12v. But what kind of wiring abilities do you have to have? Is there a converter that just plugs into the wall or battery pack?

 

Your house is stunning

 

Awesome kitchen Thomas... great looking touch with the LED's. And thank you MVMAGIC for the tip on the LED'S.

Dominic

 

They are also good for Tron discs.

 

What do I have to do to access this link? I just made my 20 post, but it's still not working...
Sorry for being such a noob :confused

 

You can almost wind some of these strips around your finger, so flexibility isn't an issue. What may be is sufficiently diffusing each LED without making the total thickness too great, even if you place each rune directly over each LED. Hopefully someone who has some in their house and is willing to experiment can help you there.

You can sometimes buy them with sockets already attached but usually you have to solder them on yourself; the datasheet will tell you which wire or pad corresponds to what. Then you just plug in your power adaptor and away you go. If you're using a battery pack, check the datasheet to see how much current the strip will be trying to pull out of it.

These strips are just groups of LEDs and resistors (and sometimes control ICs) that are connected in parallel down the length of the strip; that's why you can them short every X number of LEDs and they still work.

Give it a day or too; the guy with the syringe has been busy lately. When you hear the knock on your door in the middle of the night you'll know what to do. In the meantime, here's the relevant link from that thread: Home Made Porno Lights for the Bedroom - YouTube

 

.....

 

Thanks man, those pics were taken when I only had one kid. Now that I have two, it looks very... um.. "different" :confused

Definitely not too stiff to sew into a hood. They have many different kinds. some of them are stiffer because they are covered in a clear flexible plastic to make them waterproof. However, the ones that are "raw", are just flexible tape, as thin as paper, with small led lights every few inches. i would consider the diffussion of these though. Unlike EL tape you'll probably see each individual led light if you put it in clothing.

Almost no wiring ability needed. My LED's have two wires + & -. I hooked mine up to a "rgb controller." That gives me the ability to control my lights by remote. Then I hooked 4 of these controllers up to a power pack, still just two wires per controller. The power pack just plugs into the wall.

Thanks man. I did a remodel a few years ago. Figured I'd do it right once and for all.

Thanks again guys.
Just PM me if any of you need any help. I didn't get my LED's off ebay though, I have a local store here that I pick them up from, so I can't really help with finding them online.

 

Hey, thanks for the link!
Huh, who'd have thought... there really was a guy with a syringe at my door this night, although it is just a faint memory now... but being able to change the shape of things by sheer mental strength is well worth the little sting of the needle

 

First of all, thanks to FuseNova for pointing me to the bay and thus got lotsa LED strip for dirt cheap!

Now that I do have 'em, our house is not lit up like a Christmas tree. However I did do some neat work at my mother-in-law's ranch. Their house had an additional wing built a few years back and they left the old windows in place because they look nice. So now they have windows inside the house between two rooms. And now the windows are lined with LED strip...it looks nice as you cant see the LEDs themselves but the windows just glow. They live way out in the woods and just had a 2 week blackout after a storm so for good measure the lights can be switched to battery power if needed.

For DarthGM's question about the flexibility, had a thought here. I have not tested it, so its merely an idea. Thomas is right about the flexibility, it is rather flexible but might be a bit stiff in a hood, though that depends greatly on the material of the hood. But as you can cut this stuff every 3 LEDs apart you could probably connect several 3 LED strips together-just solder some thin wire between them so you can run them all on one battery. This way you can have the light units as far apart as you like, in case an entire strip would be too much.

As for diffusing the light, there are diffusing gels for stage lighting (gel as in a see-thru sheet, not a thick liquid!) available in many colors (Rosco and Lee Filters make them, as do many others), so they might work for you as well. You can cut them to shape and can control the amount of diffusion by adding layers. You can just roll the gel around the LED strip and tape it.