TOPIC:

I've been thinking about this for a while, so when I spotted the price of LED strip lighting had plummetted (less than 14 GBP for 10 metres on Amazon) I thought I'd go ahead ... of course, there are a lot of other costs in installing it "properly", but never mind that

I went for the single density, 3528 type LEDs in warm white - I know there are much brighter, bluer, or even programmable RGB value options out there, but I wanted a gentle, old fashioned kid of light.

Anyway, this is the stuff - with one reel powered up for illustration:





This is all 10m cut to length & laid out for soldering - a total of 12 strips for shelves, plus a square arrangement for my cheapo Ikea cabinet, plus wiring:




... and all soldered up & tested. Not very exciting ...





This is all the "waste" I had left over ... I know it _looks_ like great planning, but this was cutting it far too close IMO:





Obviously I'll need something to power it up, so this is a hardly used ATX form PC power supply (PSU):





And this is a paperclip:






This is relevant, as I could have just used this to jump start it (pin 23, usually a green wire, plus any earth/black), that & a lot of twisting wires together & electrical tape would have made the LEDs work, but I wanted something a bit less bodged up....





...

PSU must have had more use than I thought. If you are going to mess around inside a PSU, for flips' sake unplug it first &take suitable precautions... I remember when we didn't have to badword-cover like that, just in case some fool attempted to remove themselves from the gene pool (autoDarwination)






Plugs cut of, sleeving removed & combing out into the various colour codes:




By my reckoning, each wire would be rated at 9-10 Amps & they all come from a similar area of the board, but picking a few yellow (+12v) and black (earth) will spread any load a bit ...




The reel of speaker wire I already had, ditto the banana plugs & chunky wire, but I also bought a project enclosure, a bunch of binding posts, fuse holders, panel mount LED indicators, switches, & a couple of test leads:




This is well over the top, but will serve to power chargers, fans & other bits too

Nice did somthing similar.



I think I had to install some kind of resistor to fake a load so the ATX supply gives full power on the 12V otherwise they apparently cut out on a lower watt.

PSU finished with binding post/banana plug sockets, handle & rubber feet:








Wiring on the back of the switch box board:





Box finished - once the relevant leads are connected, the leftmost switch completes the PSU pin 23/green wire - earth startup circuit & 12v is sent to the PSU LED & the red lead, the switch box recieves it via the top left binding post, through the fuse (2nd holder is for a spare fuse), and then in parallel to the other 7 switches ...





I know it's over the top, but it's the look I was going for

LEDs (more by luck than judgement) are old skool dim yellow green, like they used to be ... in fact I seem to have accidentally recreated the sort of chunky gear I remember using at school in 11-14 science, 15-16 Physics ... and 17-18 Physics too come to think of it, only that equipment came in blue or off white cases, depending if it was from the 60s or 70s






Ono-Sendai? Why not

Very appropriate Johnny Mnemonic

I had planned to hide the LED strips behind aluminium Ls, but despite ordering them on Wednesday there was no sign of the supplier having even dispatched them yet - I wanted to get on with it, so here it is:

oooohhhhhhh my Got!!! My personal museum installation dream

That looks great.

And the best part of all.........Wallace and Grommet.

Jonny wrote:

...

Looking at this photo, the RTTL boat, Rolls Royce model, King Blackfoot, Mardave Meteor, Wild One, FAV, re-hash Sand Rover, Spital and Red/White Sand Scorcher have all gone, the Wallace & Gromit vans have been packed up to make space for other cars, and the RC10 is sitting in it's box after hoping (inaccurately as it turned out) that values had bounced back to the point I might get back what it cost me. the Lighsaber has gone too (I did make a little on that in the end), and the clock - despite being "radio controlled" is still 3 minutes fast

But it's not nostalgia that prompted this post - after briefly running the (12V) strips at 14.4V, most are ok but 3 are failing. It's not the odd dead groups of three LEDs that bother me so much as the ones that keep hanging on, flickering out random morse code ... obviously some replacement work is needed, but I'm also wondering if it's possible to hide some shorter strips in a near-scale looking way for the "garage" diorama ...