# LED's as room lighting?



## nila (Jun 8, 2011)

Hey all,
I currently have inset lights in my room (6 of them) and was thinking, instead of normal lights, it might be cooler to just set tons of LED's all through the roof so I'd have an effect a little more like stars in the sky and it'd give me more control over areas of the room to have how much light in etc.

Wondering if anyone has done anything like this or how well you think it'd work. 

What would I actually need? Obviously all the LED's, what else and how would I connect it to the light switch?
How could I make it dimable?

Any way I could connect it to some sort of controller that I could use with my Androi phone to dim/turn on or off the lights etc?

All ideas and thoughts hugely appreciated.

Thanks!


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## LEDAdd1ct (Jun 8, 2011)

Hi, nila! You might want to try in the "Fixed Lighting" section here. 

If you ask nicely, perhaps a mod can move it for you.


LEDAdd1ct


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## nila (Jun 8, 2011)

Dear Mod - Please can you move me


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## jason 77 (Jun 8, 2011)

I assume you are talking about using 5mm LEDs as opposed to high power LEDs? Might look cool but I would imagine the wiring would be a pain...


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## nila (Jun 8, 2011)

Wouldn't this just involve running a wire from LED to LED?
Not that big a deal I'd imagine? 

No hints or tips on it?


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## bbawkon (Jun 8, 2011)

I don't mean to be rude or cruel - please do not take my comments this way at all.

If you don't understand what it takes to connect low-voltage DC Leds to a high-voltage AC Power source (Your House Power) - then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't do it. Even with some recommendations and suggestions from people on this board, you are WAY under prepared to play with high voltage AC. Fire, electrocution, death - these are all real possibilities.

You need to learn a lot about electricity before attempting something like this.

Ben


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## doctaq (Jun 8, 2011)

i feel like youve lumped two different ideas into one, that is having a starry ceiling, and lighting a room with led, those two things cannot overlap no matter how you slice it, if it is bright enough to light your room, then it is not dim enough to be a starry ceiling

one thing you can do is to use fiber optics to create a starry ceiling when the lights are off, this is pretty safe compared to your original idea

as far as completeley lighting a room with leds, that is much more complicated and is a pretty big project to tackle if you dont already have a lot of eletrical knowledge


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## Ken_McE (Jun 8, 2011)

nila said:


> I ...was thinking, instead of normal lights, it might be cooler to just set tons of LED's all through the roof so I'd have an effect a little more like stars in the sky and it'd give me more control over areas of the room to have how much light in etc.



There is an instructable guide to building your own starfield ceiling that you might find interesting.



> Wondering if anyone has done anything like this


Yep.



> or how well you think it'd work.


Well enough to be worth doing.



> What would I actually need?


Some LEDs, be willing to learn how to fasten wires to LEDs, something to drive the LEDs, The ability to fasten things to the ceiling, the time and patience to take on a project that involves a weekend spent climbing up and down a ladder.



> how would I connect it to the light switch?


Connecting it directly to an existing light switch is probably not the best way to go at this time. I would suggest you get a power supply that plugs into a wall outlet and turn the ceiling on and off like you would a lamp. *bbawkon* does have a valid point that you should probably not fool around with the existing line voltage wiring. Fortunately, you don't have to for this project. You can leave the existing lights and switch untouched and just turn them on when you need to vacuum or something.



> How could I make it dimable?


You would pick up a power supply that is capable of dimming.



> Any way I could connect it to some sort of controller that I could use with my Androi phone to dim/turn on or off the lights etc?


Possible yes, but I suggest you keep it simple for a first project, save all the Clapper/Arduino/X-10/remote control stuff for a later time. If you make this project too big/complicated/expensive you're liable to not finish it.




> All ideas and thoughts hugely appreciated.


If you want fast & dirty you would get, say ten strings, of Christmas lights, inset a row of nails or screws along either side of the ceiling, and just string them back and forth. This can actually look quite good and you'd be done in an hour.

One question that comes to mind is what to do with the wiring. Would you be OK with having visible wires snaking all over the ceiling? Are you able to get into the ceiling to run wires, preferably without conflicting with the existing AC wiring?

Perhaps you would consider building your ceiling in big panels, say 4' by 4' sheets of foamcore that you would build on a table and then hang, so most of the wires would be hidden behind the panel? This would allow you to change or improve the design as you go along, and you would be fully entitled to do a small "Yay Me!" dance as each panel goes up and works.


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## nila (Jun 9, 2011)

Thanks for all the info, especially Ken 
My room is luckily the top room in the house and so I can easily climb into the ceiling to do the wiring and just drill tiny holes through my roof to fit the LED's though.

The 'star' effect you would get when the LED's were dimmed really low I'd imagine? 
With the whole "dont play with 240V" thing - I was planning to use low voltage LED's and just throw the 240V into a transformer that gave me a very low power output that I would then use for the LED's. My current lights are 12v after coming through transformer.
Alternately, I was thinking that I could use the 'lighting circuit' as is to wire it to a switch that just controlled a separate much lower voltage circuit that the lights were on so the 240 would just be used to turn them on/off.

As for fastening wires to LED's - I presume this is just a case of soldering them on?


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## Ken_McE (Jun 12, 2011)

nila said:


> and just drill tiny holes through my roof to fit the LED's though.



This would work nicely with 3mm, 5mm, and 8mm LEDs, the ones that look like a little bullet. Superflux LEDs would work with this also. However, you'd need quite a lot of these little fellows to light a room, hundreds I suppose.

If you want to use any of the more powerful LEDs, the ones that are sold as 1, 3, 5 watts or more, then you need a way to conduct waste heat away from the LED while it's running. If you don't it will tend to overheat, cook itself, and expire. 



> The 'star' effect you would get when the LED's were dimmed really low I'd imagine?


That is what they aimed for. That is what you get if you follow their instructions exactly. There is no reason you can't aim for something else, something brighter. One nice thing about the fibre optics is that you only have a tiny little dot visible on the ceiling, the lights themselves, LED or whatever they are, are up in the attic and you have all the room in the world to work with up there.



> With the whole "dont play with 240V" thing - I was planning to use low voltage LED's


All LEDs are low voltage when you finally get down to the LED itself.




> and just throw the 240V into a transformer that gave me a very low power output that I would then use for the LED's.


I think this is this bit that concerns us. We don't know what skills you have. Many of us here are in professions that involve lighting/making/fixing buildings and what not. Sometimes we see things. We are all in favor of doing projects like your ceiling, but we none of us want to encourage dodgy wiring. :shakehead 

Do you have experience working with mains voltage? If not, could you perhaps have this part, the tie in to the building, done by someone who has already done it a thousand times and knows how to do it properly?



> My current lights are 12v after coming through transformer.


I consider 12 volt DC as being very handy as a standard voltage to work with.



> Alternately, I was thinking that I could use the 'lighting circuit' as is to wire it to a switch that just controlled a separate much lower voltage circuit that the lights were on so the 240 would just be used to turn them on/off.


You want a current regulated power supply, also known as an LED driver. They are basically small metal or plastic boxes. You put 240V AC in one end and get nicely managed low voltage DC out the other.

We talk about LEDs as being so and so many volts, lets say 12 volts DC for a particular string of them. That 12 volts will get you in the right neighborhood for powering them, but only roughly. The LEDs themselves are actually quite current sensitive. To run properly they want a fairly precise current level, and the power supply provides them with the correct one. 

Do you perhaps have a closet or shelf or something you could use for practice before you do the whole room?



> As for fastening wires to LED's - I presume this is just a case of soldering them on?


Yes, precisely.


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## VegasF6 (Jun 13, 2011)

Thats pretty dang cool! A search for star ceilings came up with several already made kits, no reason to re-invent the wheel.


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## LEDninja (Jun 13, 2011)

doctaq said:


> i feel like youve lumped two different ideas into one, that is having a starry ceiling, and lighting a room with led, those two things cannot overlap no matter how you slice it, if it is bright enough to light your room, then it is not dim enough to be a starry ceiling ...
> 
> ... as far as completeley lighting a room with leds, that is much more complicated and is a pretty big project to tackle if you dont already have a lot of eletrical knowledge


For this part you can use 12V power supplies and run MR16 bulbs around.

Or simply replace your current room light bulbs with LED ones though they won't look any different than before.
There has been a major change in the affordable reasonable brightness LED bulbs at the major hardware stores this year.

At the $10-25 range you get 40W (CFL 9-11W) equivalents.

-Finally! A decent LED bulb for $10 (review) 7.5 watts, 430 lumens.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?313596-Finally!-A-decent-LED-bulb-for-10-(review)
-EcoSmart A-19 40 watt LED (<$20 Home Depot) 8.6W 429 lumens.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?284926-EcoSmart-40-watt-LED
-Zetalux 2 standard (~$20 Earthled.com) 6W 300 lumens.
-Zetalux 2 pro (~$35 Earthled.com) 7W 450 lumens.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?307285-Zetalux-2-standard-and-pro

At the $40 range you get 60W (CFL 13-15W) equivalents.

Philips 12w Teardown (~CAD$40 Home Depot Canada) 12W 800 lumens.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?308557-Philips-12w-Teardown
New EcoSmart 60 watt equivelent A-19 LED bulbs
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...uivelent-A-19-LED-bulbs-75-watt-R30-eqivelent


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## MikeAusC (Dec 31, 2011)

I've just bought a set of solar powered Christmas lights for $15. 

It consists of 100 white LEDs all wired in PARALLEL - yes, I double-checked, in PARALLEL.

So buy a set of these and try them out for brightness, before soldering together 100 LEDs.


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