How do they look?

matching the room lights

Are you trying to match your room light temperature with the LED?  Do you have fluorescent or incandescent lighting in the room?   I am leaning towards LED for fill lighting on the lower level, but am thinking it should be reasonably close to the overall fluorescent lighting in the room.

Marc Simpson

Not matching the room lights

The room lights are incandescent.  So, in a word, no, I'm not matching the temperature of the room lights.  My aim is for daylight, and the whiter of the two strips is nominally in the 4500K range (from memory).  I added a "Warm white" strip to even out the spectrum.  Others found that one warm white with two cool white LED strips gave good colour rendering.

I suppose if I were building a multi-deck layout, I would want the two decks to match, however.

Personally, I find it very difficult to discern one colour of light from the next.  They all look whitish to me.  It has to be pretty bad for me to notice.

Cheers,

Rene'

Mix the strips

Waterproof strips

The retailer I talked to warned me off the water-proof strips because the coating changes colour over time.  I shall be very interested in your experience.  Having said that, with the price where it is, you can almost afford to replace them every few years.

I'm considering putting an RGB water-proof strip along the backdrop to wash light up on the sky.  I will use waterpoof for this one so it doesn't get wrecked by scenery-making.

Rene'

LED Color vs Room Light Color

I too used LED 5 meter long strips, and computer power supplies.  I have 15 rolls on the bottom deck and 15 rolls on the upper deck.  Almost 8,000 individual LED emitters.  They are installed as two strips side by side to give enough light.  One 450 watt computer supply runs the lower deck, one for the upper.  

I used warm white LED strips as I did not like the bluish color of the bright white ones.  My ceiling fixtures were originally cool white lamps.  Again too blue for me.  Due to budget constraints, I did not initially change the florescent ceiling lamps to 3,000k lamps.  All seems well until I began photographing my layout.  One angle of a shot came out with the white balance ok.  The next, was blue.  Next time, the opposite.  The camera was on "auto" white balance.  OK, so I set it to manual.  Some shots ok, others too blue or red.  The color shift is really obvious if you video tour a layout.

 When I finally changed my ceiling lamps to the 3,000k lamps, all the color photography white balance issues went away.  Lesson:  If you plan on photographing your layout, use one color of illumination.  

A minor warning:  If your train room has windows, don't do photography when it is daylight.  You will never match daylight with artificial lighting.

LED Colour vs Room Light Colour

Thanks Morris,  That is great information. 

I was surprized by how little power the LED strips seem to actually draw.  Even the spec, as I read it, seemed to imply I should expect about 5 Amps per 5 metre strip.  However, I'm only getting about 1.75 Amps drawn by the two strips together.  All in, I expect to have five strips, which I should be able to run from a smaller power supply.

Cheers,

Rene'

Mounting Suggestion

Rene'

Same with me.  Much less draw than the spec indicated.

Short sections of the light strips can be hooked in series such as along curved areas.  Per the instructions, do not exceed 5 meters in length per feeder.  I ran a 12 vdc buss around the bench work for powering the light strips and tapped it where needed.

I found that the 3M adhesive on the back of the strips initially stuck pretty well on raw wood but I was afraid that over time it would fail.  I use a 1" wide strip cut from 3/16" luan plywood as a mount.  I coated the raw wood with laminate adhesive and let it dry completely.  I then mounted the light strips to the plywood strip.  Much more secure.  The 1" strip can then be attached to brackets, upper bench work, or valance structures easily.

Extra glue

Thanks for the idea, Morris.  It would be a drag to come down for an op session and find great strings of LEDs draped over the scenery.

Tape never seems to stick well to raw wood.  This, together with the light reflection, was one of the reasons I painted the undersides of the cabinets.

Of strips and glues

Practical experience here too. The pressure sensitive adhesive (PSA) on the strips is finicky. In my application I have strips mounted to painted steel (suspended ceiling rail) and to wood (end cut of birch plywood).

On the painted steel the strips initially stuck well. Three days later sections started coming loose. Eventually entire strips started falling. I resolved this by putting the strips back in place using the original PSA backing and clamping with clothes pins for a week. See a detailed post about it here: http://www.lkorailroad.com/a-not-so-sticky-situation/  Happy to report it is now nearing two years later and they are still in place.

On the plywood edge I knew the PSA on the strips wouldn't get the job done. Didn't even attempt to mount them that way. Instead, I ran a bead of PVA wood glue down the middle of the PSA and mounted the strips. Clamped the strips overnight for the PVA to dry. See a detailed post about it here:  http://www.lkorailroad.com/lower-deck-led-install/ It is one year later and they are still firmly attached.

Of strips and glues

Thanks for sharing these links, Alan.  My strips are in an awkward situation for clamping, but it sounds like I need to find a way to do it.

First strip goes up temporarily

Andrew came over last night, and we installed the first strip of LED lights to try it out over the whole layout. As I mentioned previously, one strip is definitely not enough. Also we both agree that the mixture of warm white and cool white is more pleasant than just the cool white (shown below).

The first strip of lights is installed on a trim board cut at a 45 degree angle. This also holds in the bottom of the cabinet face frame. So, we started by installing these.

We cut the 5m LED strip into five sections and soldered short jumper wires between each section. Soldering the jumpers on took four hands as both the wire and the LED strip want to move around as soon as the soldering iron gets close. I might have to figure out a fixture to help with this for the subsequent strips as I don't know if Andrew will want to sit on the floor, risking his skin to my steady hand with the soldering iron for another evening.

Once the first strip was held in place by a few pieces of electrical tape, we played around with the second strip and determined that it should also go on the trim board. Fortunately there is space. Using the second strip significantly improves the quality and amount of light, but unfortunately no picture yet.

We also experimented with stapling the LED strip down. My stapler actually spans the strip (just), and it is possible to staple it, but you have to be careful to avoid hammering any of the components. Fortunately, if you do, you only lose one 3-LED segment, rather than the whole strip.

fastening-wise, could you...

...run the LED strips through a series of plastic clips like the ones used to run electrical cable?  Then use a low profile screws, like a "pancake" screws, to tie the clips down.  Some of the larger cable tie (zap) strips have mounting holes in the end for this purpose too.

md

fastening-wise

Thanks for the idea, Mark.  Ideally I want the glue to stick, but I guess if it doesn't something like you've described is in my future.

Soldering Light Strips

When it comes to bending, the LED light strips act a little like thick tape. They will go around quite a broad curve, but you have to break them to go around a sharp corner.

Fortunately, every third LED, the strips have a line where they can be cut, and little solder pads to wire them to the next section. When I soldered the first one of these together, I had Andrew holding the two halves of the joint steady while I shot in there with the soldering iron. He must have nerves of steel to let me wield a soldering iron only a couple of centimeters from his fingers.

I wanted to continue to make progress even without Andrew, and so, I invented the simple clamp shown below. Pembroke has only about ten pairs of jumpers between strips, for which a screwdriver is sufficient to undo the clamp. If there were many more, I would at least use butterfly nuts, or maybe even some sort of a cam action. This fixture only took a couple of minutes to make, but saved a lot of time and aggravation, and probably a few burned fingers.

Can Fold Strips Also If Careful

You can also carefully fold the backing to form a stepped curve for small radius. Here is a strip folded every few inches going around an 11" radius. The folds occur at the 3^rd LED cut mark where there are solder blobs to attach to should there be a disconnect in the future. Been in place for 2 years with no issues. You get a slight angling of the LED on each side of the fold but as you can see in the last pic it makes no difference in operation.

Bending around curves

Thanks Alan,

I'd noted your bent LED strips on your thread.  Indeed, I've not particularly tried it yet, other than just holding the strips against a surface to see how they behave.  It's good to know that you folded the strips slightly to achieve your radii.

I have a number of places where I need to make an abrupt change in direction because my fascia is segmented.  However, on the strips closer to the backdrop, I'm definitely going to be trying your approach!

Rene'

Nice approach

Alan,

That looks real slick,

Thought I would post a pic of my approach,

Using RGB Led's so I have 4 wires per strip

I have a couple 90 degree corners to get around

John

I have a couple 90 degree corners to get around

Whoa, that's some nice tidy wiring, John!

Thanks for sharing

Very neat idea!

Very neat idea!

And there was Light!

Andrew came by last night, and I think it was the first time we have ever achieved what I'd hoped in the time available.

• a warm white and a cool white on a 45 degree profile board behind the fascia
• a cool white on a 30 degree profile board about 5 inches in from the fascia
• a cool white pointing straight down about three inches in from the backdrop

Home Spectroscopy

Since I primed the backdrop, every time I look at it with the layout lights on, it feels awfully blue. So, I decided to see if I could really understand what is going on with the lights.

This Saturday, we mostly had rain (go figure, it's Vancouver!), and so, the kids and I set off on a science expedition. Our first step was to procure a crystal with which we could bend light. I was surprized to find that there is no box of light experiments on the toy store shelf next to the "build your own volcano" set and the "fun with magnets." I mean, light is pretty interesting stuff, and it's free and everywhere. Children should learn about light. Well, there's a business opportunity there for someone.

After exhausting the toy stores and Dollarama, and after stopping for replenishment at Tim Hortons, we looked in at Swan Crystal because they had lots of crystal chandeliers in the window. They helpfully provided us with a couple of extra dangly bits for chandeliers, and we were off to the races.

The boy was all too happy to carve a triangular hole in the wine box with his jack knife. And then we started experimenting. Unfortunately, the chandelier crystals were too absorbent to scatter the light nicely. Fortunately, my wife reminded us about some crystal candle holders, and so, we pressed them into service. The next day, when the sun came out, the boy found a really nice piece of quartz, and so we tried that out too.

The results are shown below:

Daylight (glass)	Daylight (quartz)
Cool White 4500K LED	Warm White 3100K LED
All layout lights	Incandescent room light

One thing that stands out is just how very bright the sun is! It's also interesting that I can barely discern any green in the spectrum (this was my experience as well as the camera's). Most importantly, however, the spectrum is much broader than that which I am getting from either of the LEDs. There are reds further to the left and blues further to the right that are not there in the LED spectra.

I think that sums up the qualitative experience of LED light as well (and fluorescent light, although I didn't measure it). Compared to sunlight, and even compared to incandescent light, LED light feels "thinner." It doesn't have the same rich warmness that sunlight has.

Now, mixing the "warm" and "cool" whites obviously helps a lot: the blues are almost absent in the warm white, and there is only a sliver of red in the cool white. But even with this mix, LEDs can't hold a candle to daylight.

The bottom line? I'm still happy with my choice to go with LEDs: they are low power, quiet, cool and thin. I think, however, I should add another strip of the warm white to balance the cool whites, and this will hopefully jolly-up the whole feel of the layout.

a very valuable analysis...

Cheers Mark