Leroys Lū‘au Lounge - Home Tiki Bars

L leevigraham Grand Engineer Newcastle, Australia Joined: Aug 24, 2018 Posts: 374	L leevigraham Posted posted on Tue, Jul 9, 2019 6:10 AM On 2019-07-09 02:45, BIG SMOOTH wrote: Hi Roy. Love your bar! Fantastic work! Where did you get your LED’s from? I’m building a bar myself at the moment in the uk and I love the way you can program your lights! Hey BIG SMOOTH, Here's a list of my setup and hot tips (in no particular order #braindump): If you're a complete noob (like I was / am) here's an excellent video I have a raspberry pi and rpi-28dplus to control the lights I have a 5v and 12v power supply to power the rpi-28dplus and lights. I power the lights directly from the controller. I use xlights to program the sequences. The plan is to load the sequences onto the raspberry pi and schedule it using falcon pi player. Buy 12v not 5v pixels and stripe. 12v require less power injection and are brigher overall (you know for lightning effects). I ended up with different voltages which is painful. I've blown leds accidentally plugining in the 5v strip to the 12v output on the board. My 5v strips have 60 leds p/m and are indivudally controlled My 12v strips have 48 leds p/m and 3 leds per pixel which means you control 3 leds at a time. Here's a similar 12v strip. I purchased multiple led connectors trying to figure out which were best. In the end I nearly always soldered 3 pin LED strip pigtail connectors to the strips. For longer runs between the lights I used cat6 (more on that next point) with this style of pigtail Cat6 is not recommended as it's only 24awg thick and solid core. If solid core breaks you loose your signal or power. I ended up soldering 2 cores to each pigtail wire effectively giving me a backup if one fails. This pixel tester saved me a bunch of hassle allowing me to quickly test my soldering on the 5v strips. It also works on the 12v strip if you use external power for the strip and don't plug in the usb. Canispater Christmas has an excelent youtube channel with heaps of information. Here's a good video on buying led strips That shoud be enought to get started. Let me know if you have any specific questions. [ Edited by: leevigraham 2019-07-09 06:11 ]

On 2019-07-09 02:45, BIG SMOOTH wrote:
Hi Roy. Love your bar! Fantastic work! Where did you get your LED’s from? I’m building a bar myself at the moment in the uk and I love the way you can program your lights!

Hey BIG SMOOTH,

Here's a list of my setup and hot tips (in no particular order #braindump):

If you're a complete noob (like I was / am) here's an excellent video
I have a raspberry pi and rpi-28dplus to control the lights
I have a 5v and 12v power supply to power the rpi-28dplus and lights. I power the lights directly from the controller.
I use xlights to program the sequences. The plan is to load the sequences onto the raspberry pi and schedule it using falcon pi player.
Buy 12v not 5v pixels and stripe. 12v require less power injection and are brigher overall (you know for lightning effects). I ended up with different voltages which is painful. I've blown leds accidentally plugining in the 5v strip to the 12v output on the board.
My 5v strips have 60 leds p/m and are indivudally controlled
My 12v strips have 48 leds p/m and 3 leds per pixel which means you control 3 leds at a time. Here's a similar 12v strip.
I purchased multiple led connectors trying to figure out which were best. In the end I nearly always soldered 3 pin LED strip pigtail connectors to the strips. For longer runs between the lights I used cat6 (more on that next point) with this style of pigtail
Cat6 is not recommended as it's only 24awg thick and solid core. If solid core breaks you loose your signal or power. I ended up soldering 2 cores to each pigtail wire effectively giving me a backup if one fails.
This pixel tester saved me a bunch of hassle allowing me to quickly test my soldering on the 5v strips. It also works on the 12v strip if you use external power for the strip and don't plug in the usb.
Canispater Christmas has an excelent youtube channel with heaps of information.
Here's a good video on buying led strips

That shoud be enought to get started. Let me know if you have any specific questions.

[ Edited by: leevigraham 2019-07-09 06:11 ]

Post #796163 by leevigraham on Tue, Jul 9, 2019 6:10 AM