Great, Shawn!

Shawn,

Yes, indeed you did a good job on the post and I really like your backlighting idea.  Can you tell us more about the "RGB flexible led strip lighting"?  I've been trying to come up with a similar outcome using separate color rope lights.  I look forward to seeing more about your layout.

Rick

Thanks for the kind words.

Rick,

I picked mine up on ebay.  If you search for "RGB LED STRIP 44 KEY" or something similar you should get a number of results.  They come in a number of lengths and I bought four 5-meter strips.

A few things I learned, the hard way in some cases:

1. Get the 44 key remote if you want to mix your own colors.  The smaller (24 key?) only has the presets.
2. Many do not come with power supplies so make sure to account for that (they say laptop power supplies work ok and are relatively cheap).
3. Make sure the strip and the controller have the same pin-outs.  There are a lot of varieties and they change the order of the R, G, B wires and the common can be either + or -.  If they don't match you can always swap the wires around for the R, G, B (done that) but the + or - common must match.
4. Only run one 5 meter strip per controller even if it says you can run two.  You can't unless they've made changes!  (Ask me how I know that.)
5. Buy the non-waterproof variety for inside as it is less expensive.

I've been following your expansion and it looks great.  I airbrush on the side (birthday cakes, batting helmets, shirts, etc. for my kids and friends) but I got into it initially for model RR work so it is great to see others making good use of a great tool.  Someday I hope to apply it to my meager layout as well.

- Shawn.

Look Like Daylight?

I see lots of pretty colors but can you adjust the LEDs to give the same outdoor-looking color light as a daylight florescent?

"White" light

Alan,

All of the R, G, and B channels are adjustable in increments (I can't recall at the moment how many there are between off and full bright, I'll have to look that up).  It might not be a perfect match but you should be able to get pretty close.  The white that is preset on the remote is too blue for me so I dropped the blue channel a couple of clicks for a warmer white and saved that in one of the DIY buttons.  The four sets actually create enough light in our room to read by at night so they actually perform double duty for us:  track and "utility" lighting.

- Shawn

Led Rope lights and DMX DCC decoder

Hi Shawn,

I have a DMX DCC decoder and a DMX dimmer box with 4 outlets on it. Plus a "Ropelight" connector. Not real sure how the ropelight connector works. I dont have any ropelights yet, Anyway, JMRI has the capability to run scripts to control day and night lighting. Sunsets,Dusk,Dawn and thunderstorms. You might like to check into that. Not sure if you can tie into your system though. Opendecoder has info on DMX DCC Decoders. I plan on using DMX dimmers to control my layout lighting and look forward to more info on how yours works out.

Rob Teed

Shawn - what Rob said

Shawn,

I'm wanting to do the same thing that Rob is wanting to do - that is, to be able to automate the "sundown" lighting to night lighting.  I'll be interested to see how this goes.

Rick

IR control

Rob/Rick,

I've had the same thoughts about automating the transition at some point and I was thinking along the lines of using an IR driver since the controller and remote are IR based.  In theory one should be able to send the proper sequence from some computer interface and the controllers would react to that.  I don't have any information about the sequences though but I could envision a gradual change from daylight to dusk to night and back to day.

I am running JMRI through a Digitrax Zephyr to get access to higher order functions on my loco so I'll have to take a look when it becomes more of a priority.  Right now the user-configurable presets on the remote work OK for the casual running sunsets.  I've also wanted to look at the layout sound support in JMRI so maybe I can pursue two things at once.

If anyone knows about JMRI support for IR devices I would be interested in hearing about it.  (Of course one could always write some java code to do that I'm sure.)

One thing I didn't mention before is there are some interesting built-in modes to the controller that change the color the strip.  One of our favorites cycles through the colors of the rainbow.  With all four changing at different times it gives the room the feeling of having an aurora borealis.

If anyone wants to see shots of different colors (or maybe even a movie of some of the built in effects) let me know and I'll see if I can pull it off.

- Shawn

Daylight and a few other colors

I didn't mess with the photos b/c I didn't want to skew the colors.

The built-in white (a little too blue for me):

Warmer white:

Yellow:

Yellow-orange:

Blue:

Green and red (great for the holiday excursion train):

Lights need...

a shade or baffle to block the light that hits the ceiling, IMHO. The walls are fine, but the ceiling is not supposed to be there at all.

Coved ceiling

It's actually not bad viewed from inside the room but I would not mind a coved transition between the ceiling and walls to eliminate the sharp line.  Having the color on the ceiling actually gives the impression of more height above the track, if that makes sense.

Ceiling

I don't think a coved ceiling would help (and is more work). In your pics there is a brighter line at the intersection of wall and ceiling that is brighter. I would make a crude baffle to restrict the light from the corner ( or slightly below) from hitting the ceiling. What about a pic with a short baffle to have a direct comparison?. I think it will make the room look bigger also.

Awoke with some thoughts.

(If I ramble I apologize.  I woke up in the middle of the night with ideas rolling around in my head.)

pipopak,

Thanks for the baffle idea.  I hadn't really considered a baffle so I'll have to mock that up.  Should be fairly easy to try in place too.

I should probably say that the original plan was to make a around-the-room layout near the ceiling that we could take down easily and restore the room to its original form.  We also wanted to get trains running quickly and build on that so the idea was to start with wire shelving and Bachmann EZTrack.  That was accomplished relatively easily but lighting was an issue.  Rope lights were going to take up too much space and not give the color control I was looking for.  The LEDs fit the bill and started along the front of the layout but moved to the back because they were right in the sight line from below.  There remains an issue with front lighting though.

Going forward, we plan on making a sort-of-module every 36 to 54 inches (4 to 6 pieces of EZTrack) and swap them in as they are completed.  Again, we can easily take the layout down plus it will be a lot easier to work on at ground level.  And if skills improve we call pull early modules out and rework them.

The "modules" were going to have a back so we can have a background without painting the walls of the room and a base extending from the track to the back.  I woke up thinking about adding a ceiling with a coved transition and a narrow valence at the front.  We could put another set of LEDs on the back of that valence and get the front lighting there, possibly solving two problems.  At sunset, for example, if we set the front LEDs to orange and the back to deep purple/blue that might give the viewer the impression of having the sun set behind them.

 I like the idea so I'll have to put that on the lists of things to mock up too.

Thanks again.

- Shawn.