Remote LED lighting kit for TV/Room

Noodleman · 11-07-2006, 1:30 PM

Hi peeps,

I thought i would start a dedicated thread for this as i didnt think many people would see it if i append it to another thread.

I am designing an LED lighting kit, specificly for use with AV setups. But to make sure I get things right and more suited to home cinema setup's I want to ask the people who will use such kits for some information.

Can you let me know if the spec below would be suitable for your installs?
Is the cable long enough?
Are the tubes too big/small?
too many, or not enough LED tubes?

Any comments and suggestions are taken on board and welcome

This is the current spec:
1) 4x 12" Multicolour LED Strips with 3 meters of cable per strip

2) 1x Control Box (Where the LED Strips plug into) with 4 meters of cable
and a UK plug.

3) 1x Remote Control (to allow the LED strips to be controlled using a
remote control)

4) A packet of 6 Cable Ties and enough double sided sticky pads for the
tubes and control box.

following functions available from the remote control:
1) Fade (control how bright the LED's are)
2) Chase
3) Flash
4) Fade between colours every few seconds
5) Change the lights to another pre-set colour
6) Chase and Fade between colours every few seconds
7) Flash and Fade between colours every few seconds
8) on/off

Any sugestions as to what you would like it to do that it doesnt at the moment etc?

slowpoke · 12-07-2006, 1:15 PM

will the the remote be RF or IR?

DarkKnight · 12-07-2006, 1:17 PM

Check out the competition at www.cyron.com.

I've just installed it in my set up (see the link on my signiture).

Just wish it could be IR controlled, so I've had to resort to X10.

Cheers

Noodleman · 12-07-2006, 1:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by slowpoke

will the the remote be RF or IR?

RF, so you should be able to hide the receiver.

Noodleman · 12-07-2006, 1:29 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DarkKnight

Check out the competition at www.cyron.com.

I've just installed it in my set up (see the link on my signiture).

Just wish it could be IR controlled, so I've had to resort to X10.

Cheers

Cheers,

Ive just taken a look at their kits. Its very similar, however they are offering only two tube kits.

The design is similar. their prices i think are a little high too, its about £65 for the larger 15" kit.

I hope to price the kits less than this, and with more bulbs etc.

Thanks for the heads up. I will be looking at their kit a bit closer today

Noodleman · 15-07-2006, 7:13 AM

I would like some feedback on the following points if possible:

Would you prefure solid acrylic light tubes, or Flexible tubes (like a rubber that you can bend)

I presume the flexible tube, as it will take the shape better on the back of tv's, but the acrylic tubes can have larger LED's thus making the light tubes brighter.

If you have the choice, which would you choose.

Noodleman · 01-08-2006, 8:59 AM

the LED kit demo is now available:

http://www.neon-lights.co.uk/demo_st...g_kit_demo.avi

it is a 4mb video file.

It shows the lighting kit fading bewtween colours. The kit will allow you to set a fixed colour. My camera isnt that good at video, and doesnt show up the cyan, red and white that good im afraid.

The video clip is using 4 led strips, the final kit will use larger strips so will be brighter and light distribution will be more even.

MULLY@110 · 01-08-2006, 9:33 AM

Look cool noodle what kind of price are you gonna be looking for these kits ?

Noodleman · 01-08-2006, 9:42 AM

Around £55, the price isnt set in stone yet tho.

It all depends on how much the import duty, delivery etc costs.

stuntrider · 02-08-2006, 6:46 PM

Sounds good, gone down the Ikea route myself (I'm sooo cheap!). All I wanted to add was that I use a Harmony 688, and loads of people have 525s, both of which are IR only. I'd love a remote set of lights like this, but they won't work with my remote...maybe you're narrowing your market slightly by using RF.

Darren Blake · 02-08-2006, 8:26 PM

I can't view the video for some reason

Is it a standard AVI?

slowpoke · 02-08-2006, 9:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stuntrider

Sounds good, gone down the Ikea route myself (I'm sooo cheap!). All I wanted to add was that I use a Harmony 688, and loads of people have 525s, both of which are IR only. I'd love a remote set of lights like this, but they won't work with my remote...maybe you're narrowing your market slightly by using RF.

Agreed, IR would be better for all of us that have harmony remotes

Noodleman · 02-08-2006, 10:13 PM

I wish I could use IR, but due to the way the kits are produced, it would increase the producton costs by a fair whack, which means it would also increase the price for the end user, by as much as £12 per kit.

would this put you off such a kit?

thanks,

Noodle.

The video is direct from my camera, it should just be a standard avi which will play in windows media player using windows XP

*ben4938* · 06-09-2006, 10:33 PM

Hi
This maybe abit late but I think the extra £12 for a IR remote would be well worth it. Do you know when these will be avaiable yet?

Dunwa · 07-09-2006, 7:49 AM

I've gone down the Ikea route with two blue strips either side, but as many have said it lakes the RF ability. So for me that would be a big selling point if it uses the Z-wave protocal and can be controlled by the Harmony 895 ?

Noodleman · 07-09-2006, 8:32 AM

Hi Ben,

The current kits are still being produced by the factory. They should be on the boat sometime this week. so im expecting them in 3-4 weeks.

Its taken a little longer for them to be produced than expected.

I lot of people have been asking about IR instead of RF. The reason the kit has gone RF for now, is so the control box can be hidden. With RF you need line of sight, or for the signal to counce off a near by object

Can you let me know what level of control you would like to be able to achieve from an IR system?

I presume that you have a generic remote that you can program to control any IR device. I dont have a harmony system, or access to one to really get to grips with it and see how things work etc. I will have to do some reading. Does it work similar to the X10?

I will do some research into the Z-Wave control abilitys and see if it is something that can be added onto the version 2 kits when they are produced (will probably be at least 9 months away at the earliest)

cossie · 07-09-2006, 1:20 PM

I agree with the others about IR control.

This kit interests me but not with a RF remote. Another remote is something I just don't need. I've been looking for a long time for an IR setup like the Varilight range to control my existing LED lights. If Varilight made a IR socket that just switched on/off with their existing remote life would be great for me.

Noodleman · 07-09-2006, 2:07 PM

ive been doing a little research, and I dont think it will be a problem to add the IR capability to the version 2 of these kits in the future.

Ive asked the questions to the relavent people, and initial conversation sounds promising.

Its on the list of things to change in the future.

*ben4938* · 07-09-2006, 9:26 PM

Hi Noodleman
Sorry don't no much about how the harmony and X10 work.I see you looked into it abit already, so I will keep a look out for it in the future then maybe

neilball · 08-09-2006, 7:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deepcore

I've gone down the Ikea route with two blue strips either side, but as many have said it lakes the RF ability. So for me that would be a big selling point if it uses the Z-wave protocal and can be controlled by the Harmony 895 ?

I've got an 895 and AFAIK the Z-Wave fuinctionality does not yet work and is said to be available as a fututre firmware upgrade. There is no confirmation of when and how it will be implemented so I would not place too much hope on this being a viable solution. \i would also guess that adding Z-Wave tranceivers would cost much more than implementing IR, and then you need to add the cost of an 895 if/when it gets the required upgrade.

I vote for IR control even if it needs some tweaking or the use of IR extenders to make it work when the recevier is hidden behind the TV.

Noodleman · 08-09-2006, 10:19 AM

I presume the 895 just uses standard IR at the moment then?

More Research!!

*grabs the books*

neilball · 08-09-2006, 6:51 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Noodleman

I presume the 895 just uses standard IR at the moment then?

More Research!!

*grabs the books*

Yes, either direct line of site or hidden using the RF-IR base station.

dobbin · 10-09-2006, 11:06 PM

No. The 895 is the only one of the Logitech Harmony range (currently) that uses BOTH RF and IR.
See http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/pr...b/en,CRID=2078

Dunwa · 11-09-2006, 7:54 AM

I'd sent an email to find out where Logitech are on their Z wave implementation on the 890 (US) and 895 (EU). I will post the results ... if I get any

Noodleman · 11-09-2006, 8:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dobbin

No. The 895 is the only one of the Logitech Harmony range (currently) that uses BOTH RF and IR.
See http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/pr...b/en,CRID=2078

Just a quick question, can you program the harmony 895 manually? For example if i was to provide the frequency's and commands etc, you could use the current rf kit with the harmony 895?

Dunwa · 11-09-2006, 8:35 AM

No you can't program RF codes manually into the 895. It can only learn IR. The remote is sold as Z-wave enabled in which (from my limited understanding) you "pair" the device with your remote, but it will only work with other z wave devices

Noodleman · 11-09-2006, 9:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Deepcore

No you can't program RF codes manually into the 895. It can only learn IR. The remote is sold as Z-wave enabled in which (from my limited understanding) you "pair" the device with your remote, but it will only work with other z wave devices

Sucky

smjxm09 · 14-09-2006, 7:36 PM

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/store...roductId=11158 4 LED strips for £21 from Ikia

Noodleman · 14-09-2006, 11:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by smjxm09

http://www.ikea.com/webapp/wcs/store...roductId=11158 4 LED strips for £21 from Ikia

im aware of those, however they are single colour, with no remote option. also using older LED technology so you get more spotting