Print PDF
Favorite
Email
Step 4Wiring them together
This is a great opportunity for you to practice your cable splicing!
The lengths of cable between the lights is up to you, whatever you need. I didn't even bother to measure anything. I just fed some wire between the spokes of the umbrella at the point that I wanted them to hang from, cut the wire, then just measured out lengths against that.
So, you want two lengths of ≈10m for connection to the power supply (power wires), and two leads of whatever length you need to go between each light (link wires). I also cut two shorter lengths for each light so they'd hang down from the umbrella a bit (hang wires).
Solder the hang wires to the 2.1mm DC barrel plugs, I stripped the insulation off the positive wire so I'd know which was which. All my wire is black. The positive wire is the one you connect to the centre of the barrel plug, the negative should be the exterior of the barrel.
Inline splice the link and power wires together into two long chains of wire, don't solder them just yet. Once you've done all the inline splices, start seperating out the cores of the positive hang wires into two and wrap them around the inline splices thoroughly. Solder it. Then do the negative ones. Positive or negative first, doesn't matter, just don't mix them up!
Remember to cut some small lengths of heatshrink tubing, enough to cover your splices, and feed the power/link wire chain through them before attaching the hang wires. It is a monumental pain in the arse having to desolder and undo the splices to get the heatshrink on, so don't forget it!
Keep doing this until you've got all your DC barrel plugs connected in parallel to eachother.
The lengths of cable between the lights is up to you, whatever you need. I didn't even bother to measure anything. I just fed some wire between the spokes of the umbrella at the point that I wanted them to hang from, cut the wire, then just measured out lengths against that.
So, you want two lengths of ≈10m for connection to the power supply (power wires), and two leads of whatever length you need to go between each light (link wires). I also cut two shorter lengths for each light so they'd hang down from the umbrella a bit (hang wires).
Solder the hang wires to the 2.1mm DC barrel plugs, I stripped the insulation off the positive wire so I'd know which was which. All my wire is black. The positive wire is the one you connect to the centre of the barrel plug, the negative should be the exterior of the barrel.
Inline splice the link and power wires together into two long chains of wire, don't solder them just yet. Once you've done all the inline splices, start seperating out the cores of the positive hang wires into two and wrap them around the inline splices thoroughly. Solder it. Then do the negative ones. Positive or negative first, doesn't matter, just don't mix them up!
Remember to cut some small lengths of heatshrink tubing, enough to cover your splices, and feed the power/link wire chain through them before attaching the hang wires. It is a monumental pain in the arse having to desolder and undo the splices to get the heatshrink on, so don't forget it!
Keep doing this until you've got all your DC barrel plugs connected in parallel to eachother.
| « Previous Step | Download PDFView All Steps | Next Step » |
 |
Add Comment
|
