[supraTTman]

Originally Posted by Quinten

Cheers supra! I can't link the two sides together (not without major surgery on the kitchen), so I'd be looking at two controllers with same codes so one remote controls both controllers. Are those suitable?

Success!! - I managed to pair one Touch-sensitive remote control with two LED controllers.

[a l e x]

Originally Posted by mufcmark74

My LED strip arrived from Visual Chillout yesterday and I set up this afternoon
I previously had a series of Ikea dodier lights secured to back of 50 inch Tv but fancied a change
I am impressed with the Visual Chillout lights as they are brighter,give a more uniform spread of light,more colours and have programmed my harmony one remote to turn on/off etc in sync with tv etc
Would recommend to anyone who is considering backlighting
Super fast delivery and service also
Added picture to show lights in daylight with the blinds closed (not best quality)
You may notice the IR receiver in the top Lh corner (can only be seen from certain angles)

Looks good that... which kit did you get?

[reddevil74]

Hi
It is the 1500 colour 5m strip 30 led/m

[deblee]

Originally Posted by Smurfin

Trust me, it's not

btw, I ended up mixing my own colour for evening viewing, I found default white to be too pink.

Old topic but noticed you mention the same sort of issue I have (although my white has a green tint), I assume you managed to get a "clear" white
No amount of tweaking of brightness on mine can I get a clear white that I'm after
It seems as the leds use red/green/blue to achieve white there is always some form of a tint to the white colour

edit realised I don't have the same set of lights so I cannot mix colours
Probably should have invested in those instead

Just noticed this http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...A12DDUOH2L1ZHL would this achieve the same effect?

[supraTTman]

Smurfin is using an RGB controller with full RGB up/down control, so he can produce many shades of white. A cool white LED strip will always produce a purer / more clinical white light than an RGB strip.

[deblee]

Originally Posted by supraTTman

Smurfin is using an RGB controller with full RGB up/down control, so he can produce many shades of white. A cool white LED strip will always produce a purer / more clinical white light than an RGB strip.

ok thanks, would that controller I posted a link to allow a custom white to be produced though?
I already have this set of lights http://www.amazon.co.uk/COLOUR-CHANG...sim_03_01_t_lh so I assume the controller would work with them?

[supraTTman]

Originally Posted by deblee

ok thanks, would that controller I posted a link to allow a custom white to be produced though?

Yes - it has RGB up/down control. It may not be compatible with what you have at the moment - if you have common anode kit then you should be OK. I've sent more info via PM.

[DAZZAK]

Hi All

I am new to this forum and have read this Thread which is very Informative. I know from it what LED's i need for my proposed 37" Samsung but my question is this. I am turning a room into an office/home entertainment (approx 18' x 8')and do not want bulb lighting and certainly nothing on the ceiling. will LED strip lighting fitted at high level around the perimeter of the room give of suffiecient lighting. Im not into LUX levels but i suppose i am looking to achive the sam as a 60 watt bulb in the centre of the room. What does the 60/m achieve

Cheers

Dazzak

[supraTTman]

60/m RGB and White LED strip is rated at 14.4W/m consumption maximum. In reality, it is more like 10W/m even with dual-feeding. (For RGB strip, this is when all the RG&B LED's are running flat-out producing a bright white-ish colour.

So your 18x8 room will need around 15m of strip, which will consume 15 x 10W/m = 150W.

Now we all know that filament bulbs and halogens waste a lot of electricity by producing lots of heat, so a 60W bulb only chucks out around 20-25W of light and 35-40W of heat.

Our 150W of LED strip on the other hand converts around 70-80% of this power into light ~ 100W. However, LED strips rely on a reflecting surface to bounce the light off - ideally a flat plain white surface and around 10-20cm from the strip - and so effective light wattage is difficult to quantify.
So yes - you probably will have more light averaged around the room, but if you want to read a book for example, then a ceiling light directly above you will work better - or a side lamp maybe. It all depends on what you need from your lighting.

The twin circuit lounge ceiling lighting linked to at the start of this thread (night-time photo shown below) uses only 30 LED/m RGB strip so you can get a feel for what the stuff can do when wrapped around all 4 sides of a room. White LED strip will always produce more white light than an RGB strip with R&G&B all-on. Note how this white leather settee has added together the red and green lighting to produce a yellow settee - cheaper than going down to DFS when the wife gets bored with the furniture colour! You can't do this with white strips!

[supraTTman]

Dazzak,

Something else to consider, as not everyone wants RGB coloured lighting in a lounge. There is a relatively new white CT LED strip gaining popularity - CT is short for Colour Temperature. These CT LED strips use alternate cool white and warm white 5050 LED's at 60/m. The cool white and warm white LED's can be controlled independently by using a 2 channel CT LED controller - in essence an RGB controller (3 channel) stripped down to 2 channels. These are appearing as touch sensitive controllers - see photos below. The colour temperature can be adjusted from around 2700K (warm & cosy) to 6500K (cool & clinical & brighter for book reading).

[DAZZAK]

Thanks SupraTTman, i Noticed quite a few people have com to you for their Lighting. I will give you a shout when i get round to that bit of my project which i have decided to post on theforum from tomorrow. most of the Office/ Media project will have Ikea Billy Cupboards fitted to the walls which will leave about 180mm to the ceiling once insulated and boarded. for my own reasons I have decided to run 50mm trunking externally around three walls to which i was toying with the idea of fixing the LED to that in some way by way of some sort of upside down concave plastic fitting which i have seen somewhere and which should throw the LED light upwards. What do you Think?

[richardc1983]

Hi SupraTTman,

I have just bought a house picture attached:

I am looking for some LED lighting to go over the tops of the cupboards in the picture. Currently I use a fluorescent tube in my old house with a coloured gel sleeve however these have to be replaced often as the gel fades & at £6 a gel sleeve this is becoming wasteful.

Can you reccomend something for me and what I would need? Also if possible I would like to illuminate underneath the cupboards onto the worktops as you have done in one of your gallery pictures.

Also if I was to use what was left over from the cupboards I could also replace the coloured flourescent tube under the bed in my bedroom with LED. Would I need to buy an additional kit and controller?

Confused as to the options some say 1500 colours (1500 Kit) and some say 32 Static Colours assuming the LED is the same across the options it is just the controllers that are different.

The touch control kit seems best as this seems to control like the philips living colours lamps that can be bought. Do the 1500 colours on the touch kit show when it is doing the slow fade?

Kind Regards

Richard.

[supraTTman]

DAZZAK,

180mm is perfect - especially if you have a white ceiling. I agree that it is difficult to install LED strip that looks both elegant & inconspicuous if mounted on a wall rather than above a floating ceiling or behind a vertical panel as I did.

Wall-mounted pelmets are an obvious choice as you can hide all the PSU's/RGB amps/ 6Amp 4-core dual feed cables etc. If you have concave plaster fittings then you can angle the strips to point slighty inwards rather than straight up to broaden the spread of light towards the centre of the ceiling. Make the most of the 120 degree beam angle!

[richardc1983]

Originally Posted by richardc1983

Hi SupraTTman,

I have just bought a house picture attached:

I am looking for some LED lighting to go over the tops of the cupboards in the picture. Currently I use a fluorescent tube in my old house with a coloured gel sleeve however these have to be replaced often as the gel fades & at £6 a gel sleeve this is becoming wasteful.

Can you reccomend something for me and what I would need? Also if possible I would like to illuminate underneath the cupboards onto the worktops as you have done in one of your gallery pictures.

Also if I was to use what was left over from the cupboards I could also replace the coloured flourescent tube under the bed in my bedroom with LED. Would I need to buy an additional kit and controller?

Confused as to the options some say 1500 colours (1500 Kit) and some say 32 Static Colours assuming the LED is the same across the options it is just the controllers that are different.

The touch control kit seems best as this seems to control like the philips living colours lamps that can be bought. Do the 1500 colours on the touch kit show when it is doing the slow fade?

Kind Regards

Richard.

Picture added in post above

[supraTTman]

Originally Posted by richardc1983

Hi SupraTTman,

I have just bought a house picture attached:

image











I am looking for some LED lighting to go over the tops of the cupboards in the picture. Currently I use a fluorescent tube in my old house with a coloured gel sleeve however these have to be replaced often as the gel fades & at £6 a gel sleeve this is becoming wasteful.

Can you reccomend something for me and what I would need? Also if possible I would like to illuminate underneath the cupboards onto the worktops as you have done in one of your gallery pictures.

Also if I was to use what was left over from the cupboards I could also replace the coloured flourescent tube under the bed in my bedroom with LED. Would I need to buy an additional kit and controller?

Confused as to the options some say 1500 colours (1500 Kit) and some say 32 Static Colours assuming the LED is the same across the options it is just the controllers that are different.

The touch control kit seems best as this seems to control like the philips living colours lamps that can be bought. Do the 1500 colours on the touch kit show when it is doing the slow fade?

Kind Regards

Richard.

The dark wall tiles and dark worktop may not work particularly well with RGB LED strip, but you could use white LED strip for under-cupboard lighting. If you need decent light levels for reading cook books for example, then I would go for 120 LED/m strips - possibly 3528 or 5050. I've tried 60/m 5050 cool white strips beneath my cupboards and they don't produce the light levels I am getting with T8 fluorescents.
Above the cupboards you have a white wall (and white ceiling?) so RGB strip would work well here - even 30/m 5050 strip.
If you have multiple RGB strips that are seperated by oven hoods, doorways or are on different walls then you'll need to connect all the strips together using 4-core cable. Or use multiple RF LED controllers that can be paired to one remote control as in post#121 at the top of this page.

The touch controller uses RF and has 32 static colours on the colour ring, but when in colour fade mode produces many colours - it's hard to say how many. In this mode, the brightness is adjustable (thanks to PWM) but the speed isn't.

The 1500-colour controller uses IR. This controller also produces lots of colours in colour fade mode and in this mode the speed can be changed but the brightness can't (non PWM=analogue technology).

[richardc1983]

Originally Posted by supraTTman

The dark wall tiles and dark worktop may not work particularly well with RGB LED strip, but you could use white LED strip for under-cupboard lighting. If you need decent light levels for reading cook books for example, then I would go for 120 LED/m strips - possibly 3528 or 5050. I've tried 60/m 5050 cool white strips beneath my cupboards and they don't produce the light levels I am getting with T8 fluorescents.
Above the cupboards you have a white wall (and white ceiling?) so RGB strip would work well here - even 30/m 5050 strip.
If you have multiple RGB strips that are seperated by oven hoods, doorways or are on different walls then you'll need to connect all the strips together using 4-core cable. Or use multiple RF LED controllers that can be paired to one remote control as in post#121 at the top of this page.

The touch controller uses RF and has 32 static colours on the colour ring, but when in colour fade mode produces many colours - it's hard to say how many. In this mode, the brightness is adjustable (thanks to PWM) but the speed isn't.

The 1500-colour controller uses IR. This controller also produces lots of colours in colour fade mode and in this mode the speed can be changed but the brightness can't (non PWM=analogue technology).

Thank you, yes white walls and ceiling so may keep existing t8 fluorescents that are under the units. Just going to do the main cupboards at top of the units I think but will measure exact length as its not 5 metres so may get you to separate the remainder for me and then I can use elsewhere.

[supraTTman]

Sorry - didn't answer all your questions.
There are 2 ways to use RGB strip remnants:
1). Buy another controller & psu to get similar functionality.
2). Just buy a psu. Connect the strip V+ wire to psu +ve and 1, 2 or all 3 RG&B wires to -ve : 1 wire gives you red, green or blue, 2 wires gives you yellow, cyan & magenta, all 3 wires gives you white-ish.

Remember the strip has wires on each end, so once the strip is cut into more than 2 pieces then the 3rd and subsequent pieces will be 'wireless', so you would need to solder on 4 wires.

[richardc1983]

Originally Posted by supraTTman

Sorry - didn't answer all your questions.
There are 2 ways to use RGB strip remnants:
1). Buy another controller & psu to get similar functionality.
2). Just buy a psu. Connect the strip V+ wire to psu +ve and 1, 2 or all 3 RG&B wires to -ve : 1 wire gives you red, green or blue, 2 wires gives you yellow, cyan & magenta, all 3 wires gives you white-ish.

Remember the strip has wires on each end, so once the strip is cut into more than 2 pieces then the 3rd and subsequent pieces will be 'wireless', so you would need to solder on 4 wires.

Excellent stuff. I will buy psu and controller i think will you cut it into the required length for me?

I will use the remaining 2m to uplight the wall behind my bed.

[supraTTman]

The cut points are every 5cm for 60LED/m strip and every 10cm for 30LED/m strip, so finished strip lengths must be multiples of these.

[richardc1983]

Originally Posted by supraTTman

The cut points are every 5cm for 60LED/m strip and every 10cm for 30LED/m strip, so finished strip lengths must be multiples of these.

So if I needed roughly 3 meter then 2 meter can this be done?

[supraTTman]

Yep - just give me exact dim's or are you happy with 2&3m?

[richardc1983]

Originally Posted by supraTTman

Yep - just give me exact dim's or are you happy with 2&3m?

I will confirm to you once I have moved in the exact dimensions of the main piece.

[Fatti]

Been looking for some mood lighting for behind the TV for a while....just ordered the 1500-colour DIY kit...looking forward to see how they look

[CrossyX]

Need a little advice if anyone can help?

Currently have the below set-up and i am worried with it being recessed back in to the wall the strips of light wont work correctly and give low light?

Anyone have or seen a similar set-up? Does it work OK?

Thanks.

Crossy

[supraTTman]

You don't need to worry about low light levels reflected off your (beige?) backwall because the volume you are trying to illuminate is tiny. So just go for 30 LED/m strip - this should easily do the job. 5m of strip is enough for a 65" TV assuming the strip is attached to all 4 sides on the rear cover.

Also, a beige colour will faithfully reproduce many colours available from an LED controller that features RGB up/down primary colour mixing.

[rovers77]

I have been looking at the Led music controllers. Any of the types I have seen online change multiple colours when changing to the beat of the music.

Does anyone know if it is possible to use a static colour only, e.g. blue light flashing on and off to the music?

[dar2005]

Not sure of the answer to your specific question, but if you turn your music up really LOUD, you'll probably have some blue flashing lights outside the front of your house before long,... though probably not in beat with the music

[supraTTman]

Originally Posted by rovers77

I have been looking at the Led music controllers. Any of the types I have seen online change multiple colours when changing to the beat of the music.

Does anyone know if it is possible to use a static colour only, e.g. blue light flashing on and off to the music?

Yes it is possible - certainly with the common anode RGB stuff I play around with - I tried this a few months back. Are you wanting to do this with an RBG strip or with a blue-only strip? It can work with both types but the wiring requirements are different.

[rovers77]

Was looking to see if it was possible with an RGB strip. How easy/difficult is the wiring to get this to work?

[supraTTman]

Not too difficult but requires soldering wires to a 2-way 3-pole switch so that you can switch between normal RGB mode and blue-only sound-activated mode.

EDIT: Extra info: If you wanted to choose the colour that is displayed in sound-activated mode, you will need another switch : 3-pole 3-way to select Red, Green or Blue. To get the secondary colours (yellow, cyan or magenta) it would be necessary to use quite a few Schottky diodes - not expensive but a lot more soldering!
The switches look like this