LED Patio Umbrella Jar Lights

This summer has been quite good here on the south coast of England. Got the grass cut, rained destruction on some hideously overgrown plants, the garden looked more like a garden and less like a small wildlife preserve. More Alan Titchmarsh and less Bill Oddie. Plenty of BBQ's sat out until the early hours of the morning. Good times.

Now I love candles, and there were plenty. I made sure of that! There was enough light for general chit-chat and it was very atmospheric, but it wasn't really enough. I had seen various commercial patio umbrella light offerings in the garden centres and supermarkets, but none of them seemed worth what they were asking for them.

I knew I could do better, brighter... cheaper? Probably not to be honest, but more flexible? More satisfing? Definitely.

So now I'm done rambling, let's make some LED Jar Lights!

Step 1: Prerequisites

Skills

You need to know how to solder electronic components. That is a whole other topic that I'm not going to go into here.

You also need to know how to splice wires together, specifically, an inline splice. Those are the best kind and once you've done it a coupe of times, it's easy and quick. Not to mention strong and convenient.

There are many videos and tutorials on the net about how to solder and splice wires. I'd suggest that you search this site and YouTube/Vimeo for more information on that.

Tools

- Soldering Iron. I have a 40 watt "pencil" type iron with a fine point tip.
- Solder. I used ∅0.7mm lead-free solder.
- Helping Hands. You know, those weighted base thingies with crocodile clips on it. If you don't have one, get one. It will make your life so much easier, you'll see why.

A note on solder: I've seen a number of places online where people have been complaining about lead free solder. They say it makes for unreliable joints and have all recommended "60/40" solder, meaning 60% tin and 40% lead.

Personally, I've had better results using lead free solder comprised of Tin, Copper and Silver than I have with the "good old" Tin and Lead stuff. So my recommendation is to get a roll of ∅0.7mm lead-free solder with silver. I find there is a massive difference between using ∅1mm and ∅0.7mm solder. For me it just makes it that little bit easier and gives me greater control over the amount of solder going into the joint, and lead-free because we've only got one planet.

Supplies

- Jars. The ones I got were labeled "cosmetic jars", they're ∅25mm and 30mm tall. They turned out to be the perfect size.
- LEDs. The technique I use here somewhat relies on the package type of the Superflux Piranha LED. So get plenty of those or similar.
- Resistors. Anything between 100Ω and 150Ω is fine for Warm White Superflux Piranha LEDs. I used 100Ω.
- Single core wire. If there's insulation, you'll want to remove it, just to make things less fiddly.
- Multi core wire. This will power the whole string. I used 7/0.2mm.
- DC Sockets. I used standard 2.1mm "barrel" type panel-mount sockets.
- DC Plugs. Just need to compliment the sockets.
- Heat-shrink tubing. Magical stuff. I used 3:1 shrink ratio. ∅3mm unshrunk.

Quantities

Each individual light will require:
- 1x Jar
- 1x DC Socket
- 1x DC Plug
- 3x Resistors
- 9x LEDs

You'll need one extra DC Plug for the end of the light string to plug into your 12vdc power source.

As for the length of the multicore wire, I allowed ≈10 metres from the first light to the end plug for the power supply. It's more than enough for me to get from the power supply to the patio umbrella. Anything more than that would just be a nightmare to untangle!

I was unable to find multicore wire where there were two insulated strands fused together, like they use on commercial strings of lights. Instead I used a drill to twist two seperate lengths together tightly.

Comments

[bombmaker2]

I might have to try this. Really good for a first Instructable..

[mduk]

Thanks, I like to try to make a good first impression!
I'll certainly be making more of these as soon as I can decide what colours I want them in! But before that I should get a PWM dimmer done for these ones, and maybe the motion-activated switch too.

P.S. Vote for it in the LED contest! (when it finally gets approved!) If there's one thing I really need it's MORE LEDS! I just don't have enough!

[bombmaker2]

I will and you can never have enough LEDS. There like duct tape, just so many uses.

[HarveyH44]

Speaker wire, two multi-strand conductors, insulated, fused together... For outdoor, low voltage lighting, they also have 'zip-cord', which isn't too expensive at Home Depot.

[mduk]

That would work. I didn't think to look for speaker cable, but what I tend to think of speaker cable as is quite thick, heavy and much more expensive than the kind of cable required for transmitting low-voltage power. It seemed like a waste of good cable. But you're quite right, some entry level speaker cable would be adequate and would negate the need to twist two seperate strands together.