Desk Surface Lighting

[James Sentman]

I have had very good luck with the newer 5630 sized LED strips. They are very bright, I like the warm white color very much too, some other LED types have a slightly off warm white. They also generate a lot less heat than the older 5050 or other size based strips. I would very much recommend them. I usually purchase off Amazon or eBay. One seller I’ve used in the past who I can recommend is this fellow:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/5M-10M-LED-Strip-Dimmable-3528-5050-5630-Warm-Cool-White-Kitchen-Cabinet-Light/201886758968

but of course I have no idea if he is still selling the same strips that I bought 6 months ago that are working so well. Make sure you select the right size LED’s and the proper waterproof or not from his popups. I have also ordered the same things in larger amounts for larger projects off AliExpress for even less money each, but I have no idea about recommendations for specific sellers there.

I would also recommend a MeanWell brand power supply. For outdoor installs they make fully encapsulated ones which are very nice. For internal ones or protected enclosure installs you can get a DIN rail mounted power supply from them as well. The non-encapsulated ones usually have a voltage adjust on them so you can dial the 12v down to 11.4 or 11v. This only reduces the maximum brightness of the LED’s by a very small amount but cuts down on the heat generated by them at full brightness significantly. Make sure to actually measure the power use of the amount of LED strip you’re going to need and not to rely on the so many watts per meter of them that they say. It’s often drastically different. Get a power supply that is at least a little over rated for the amount of power you need for everything. you don’t have to hugely oversize it, but a little extra capacity will make it run cooler and therefore last longer and be more reliable at your maximum load. It also gives you some expansion room for adding more interesting things later.

If anyone’s time frame for setting this up is flexible or can wait a couple more months I can send you some controllers to experiment with around that time. Drop me a note off the list and I’ll add you to the list of people I’ll make beta test the things for me. I have a really bad history of delivering on such things in a timely manner however, so it may slip a bit further. If you want to get up and running immediately there are several different Z-Wave based PWM controllers for led strip lighting out there. I don’t necessarily like the look of any of them as much as what I’ll eventually deliver ;) But they are available now.







> On Oct 5, 2019, at 5:54 PM,  Jerry — MacSolutions <jerry at stlmacguy.com> wrote:
> 
> Have LED strips gotten any more dependable?  It seems like most, that are installed outdoors, fail rather quickly.

Thanks,
 James


James Sentman                       http://www.PlanetaryGear.org		http://MacHomeAutomation.com




-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.machomeautomation.com/pipermail/xtensionlist/attachments/20191006/15e7af4b/attachment.html>