garden / driveway lighting - Should I make it RGB and use Lightjams/ELM?!

[o865324]

Happily using Lightjams and ELM with my band - all good!

We're doing some major landscaping at our house part of which will include lighting for driveway, perimeter and paths.

We're in the UK, so it is always damp! Our driveway has retaining walls with say a max 20 metre continuous length. I probably have 100 to 200 metres of wall/path/drive/fence I want to light in total.

Normal solution is to place individual white LED lamps along the wall every couple of metres and daisy chain the power to each with a single switch for all of them.

I am contemplating whether to do something different, and use either:

1. DMX controlled RGB pixels around 3w power. I'd need 50 to 100 of them so cost per fixture is important.

2. WS2811 LED strip in aluminium profile with a way of directing the light downwards so the fixture isn't visible. Need to consider power distribution over long runs.

Wonder if anyone had any experience doing this, and making it long lasting and waterproof. Could be more of a Christmas lighting type problem with long wiring runs to consider.

Cheers

[Anthony S]

Hello,

Some suggestions..

Because of the long distances going with a higher voltage is really helpful. 12V LED strip will get you at least 2.5 times further in distance than 5V LED strip before the lights start dimming. Other problems along with dimming when using 5V strip over long disances is the RGB colours might start to flicker, one reason is because in a long run the voltage at the WS2811 led chips drops below 5Volts which is needs to operate correctly, a lower voltage limits ws2811 chips ability to remodulate and amplify the RGB control data before sending to the next ws2811 chip in the line. 5V strip will also draw a lot of current when the strip quickly becomes bright, drawing lots of current will cause the power supply voltage to drop down temporariliy causing the ws2811 led chips to be below 5volts and the data again gets corrupted. 

24V LED lighting is the best over this kind of distance, you can have one power supply for much much longer runs of lighting and still be a safe voltage and less current You can buy led modules similar to the one below, (search online for DC24V UCS1903 waterproof 60mm), this is using UCS1903 led chips which is an alternative to ws2811 used in amusement parks. The same LED controllers which control ws2811 will very often control UCS1903 as well. Rectangular versions also exist if you look hard enough.

These led modules often act as 1 pixel per module, less pixels will mean less universes of Artnet or sACN which means less control hardware and Lightjams will run smooth. Pixel modules like this are fully waterproof, and if you ask a company (before you buy) if they have extension leads of the same type, you can plug one light straight into the next all the way down the line, and have reliable waterproof long distance led pixels.

I made a purchase direct from a manufacturer recently (after finding some options online) and they had extension leads for around .50c USD / 1 meter lead, to go with their lights. The extension leads worked great to link all the LED modules with waterproof connections. however postage can be high when direct from manufacturer so buying all at once or organise delivery yourself with a logistics company is cheaper. I always buy a small sample order first to check it is what i actually want, physically testing it myself with all the compenents together, and then place a proper order.

If you find 24volt led strip then great use that it will allow the greatest distances, but because ws2811 chips are a 5 volt product, if you look along a 24V or 12V strip there will be voltage regulation, passive bits of circuitry to step down the voltage from 24V to 5V. The end result is 24V strip and a some 12V strip have a lower resolution with1 pixel controlling three leds or more, instead of 1 pixel controlling 1 led which standard 5V ws2811 strip often does, but once again upside is much less current and much further distances.

All in all, over long distances i wouldn't use 5V products because you need power supplies all over the place. Instead use 24V or 12V at lowest. Also 100+ meters led strip will be a heap of pixels to control, and will require multiple LED controllers and a higher spec computer so count up your pixels first and compare that with your hardware (LED controller) specifications, remembering that you can only get 170 pixels / universe (512channels in a universe / 3channels a pixel).

An example of reduced current for same brightness of led:

14watts of LED strip, 5 volts = 2.8 amps

14watts of LED strip, 24 volts = 0.58amps.

Hope this was helpful for you.

Also thanks lightjams your software is really useful.

[o865324]

Thank you Anthony.

Really helpful post. After spending a long time browsing around yesterday I had settled on waterproof 24V pixels like you mention, along with extension leads. But I couldn't find any rectangular ones, so had paused looking for a while. Do you have any links to rectangular ones?

It would be nice to be able to have some up/down wall mounted lights, as well as some low level wall mounted lights that fire the light down onto the path. I started looking at aluminium profile for LED strip, but didn't quite find what I was looking for, and the current / number of pixels would, as you say, become unwieldy.

Will keep on looking.

[Anthony S]

Hey that’s great yeah it can take a long time to find what you are looking for. I went through getting all the wrong things and made all the mistakes with supply voltage etc before I am getting the lights I need.

 

Would love to see 24V DC individual pixel controlled strip available easily on the market, that will change the game a lot with regards to long distance led strip.

 

Try searching for ‘amusement pixel light 24V ‘ that opens up more LED light options.

 

Regards,

Anthony.

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