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Step 8Mounting the Light Bar
Now that you've finished your light bar, there are numerous places to put it.
I've put some behind my couch so beams of green and blue lights shine out of the back. We also screw them into the ceiling to shine down the walls for our primary lighting in our house. For LAN parties (with the red and blue rooms of the house, each with red and blue LEDs) we place them in the corners to shine along the walls for each team's room color, and green LED light bars signify the neutral room with all the food and drinks. Use your imagination to place these bars, especially with the use of refractive (glass) or reflective surfaces.
This guide was focused on a 5 foot bar, but any size will work. If you have any improvements upon my methods, or great ideas on how to use a light bar, feel free to leave a comment.
Happy lighting - QuackMasterDan.
I've put some behind my couch so beams of green and blue lights shine out of the back. We also screw them into the ceiling to shine down the walls for our primary lighting in our house. For LAN parties (with the red and blue rooms of the house, each with red and blue LEDs) we place them in the corners to shine along the walls for each team's room color, and green LED light bars signify the neutral room with all the food and drinks. Use your imagination to place these bars, especially with the use of refractive (glass) or reflective surfaces.
This guide was focused on a 5 foot bar, but any size will work. If you have any improvements upon my methods, or great ideas on how to use a light bar, feel free to leave a comment.
Happy lighting - QuackMasterDan.
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As far as combining the light bars with water, unless there is something moving within the water, it will just look like a light is passing through your body of liquid, no different than a light-bulb or fluorescent tube. Electronics don't work well with water, and making a submersible light bar water-tight would be a lesson in failure.
There are however applications that involve LEDs and water. One of my favorites is rapidly pulsing LEDs that shine indirectly (meaning you don't see the LEDs themselves) into falling water droplets. The LEDs of red, green, and blue change color very rapidly, on par of 20-30 different colors a second. Depending on a water droplet, if it falls into the path of a LED as it is a certain color, it looks as though you are seeing falling jewels. Bigclives.com RGB microcontroller kit has pre-programmed patterns, including one for water droplets. That's a rather advanced project for a complete beginner (more advanced on the water droplets than the lighting), but if you are interested I use his controller for lighting my apartment. Here is a link to my instructable which is currently unpublished. http://www.instructables.com/id/ESTRWXVFYTCLJ5J/
You would need to be a bit more specific by "water feature", there are a million different ways to interpret a water LED project, whatever you decide to create, make an instructable and send me a link when you are done.
Lastly, this instructable I consider to be a great beginners project, it's one of the first things I ever made electronically, explains the basics of LEDs, resistors, amperage, and voltage, and doesn't need to be precisely done. I say, go for it!
I have a similar question about water. I was thinking about making this to put outside behind a small glass block wall so at night the LEDs will light up the wall, but I'm afraid it will not last long once it rains. Any advice? I was thinking maybe using hot glue around the LEDs and any openings to try and make it water tight.
Also, I'm very new to electrical work, with a 9V power supply and the LEDs only needing 3ish would I be able to double the size of this and make a 10 foot bar?
Thanks.
If your 9v power supply pumps out 340mA, it would be able to supply 9v * 0.34A = 3.06 Watts.
Even though the LEDs run at 3.0v, it's easier when doing a chain of them to have the supply have a higher voltage. If you want a ten foot bar, calculate how many LEDs it would be, then add up the Watts. I imagine that would be something like 40-50 LEDs for ten feet. 5mm and 10mm LEDs run at 20mA. so 0.02A * 3.0v * 40LEDs = 2.4 Watts. Pick whatever number you want, whether it be 50 or 100 LEDs, just calculate by the watts.
Don't try waterproofing the light-bar, you will be let down and become frustrated, especially at the electrical connector (though you could just stick the wire directly in and hot glue it). By this I mean, do not try to waterproof your light bar to the point you can submerge it in water. If you're just adding extra hot glue to keep out moisture, it's better than nothing I suppose.
I've seen an installation where someone used LEDs to light up their glass block wall. First off, he didn't use dinky dim 14kmcd 5mm LEDs, but 10mm 70kmcd LEDs (kilo millicandela, a measure of brightness), and around 40 of them (three per block). The lights were placed on top of the glass wall facing downward. He had to make little risers to keep the LEDs from bumping into the glass so they could face straight down.
Though his installation was inside of a wall for a bathroom, it sounds like yours is standing outside in your back yard. To protect it from the rain, get a small piece of flexible waterproof plastic (heck, I bet scissors and a cheapy rainjacket would do), and just throw it over the light bar so the rain doesn't land on it. It shouldn't need to be very wide, just enough to cover the light-bar and touch whatever surface it is sitting on. I made a quick picture to show you what I mean. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.
So, what I was thinking was placing it behind the wall and allowing it to shine up along the back of the wall, similar to what you did with the lights behind the couch. With the blocks being clear and diffused it should light the blocks up as a fade from the bottom to the top, the bottom blocks being the brightest. The issue with this is that the lights sine directly up, and thus could not be covered. Maybe if I fill the track with silicone after all the wiring is done to ensure no water can touch the wires that might elevate much risk. I don't know. I am thinking of making one just for the hell of it and seeing how long it lasts.
Thanks again for the response