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Light Strips for Home Decoration?
Smegoid asks: " Three cheers for light strips for case mods and all that, but what about light strips for interior TRON style design? Wouldn't mind Tron'ing out my apartment. Anyone know a source for strips longer than 1.5m? What about powering the stuff without using a computer power supply. The potential for light strips goes well beyond a computer case. Think lightcycles, think MCP!" I wouldn't go as far as TRON but a room tricked out with a nice glow-light would make for a really cool effect. If case strip mods aren't an effective way to get this kind of look, is there another way to go? Long before I discovered light strips, I thought that fiber optics and some colorized light source might be the way to go, but what kind of light sources work best with fiber for best described as "mood lighting"?
http://www.eighthreality.com/
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Look under the illuminescense category for "EL-Wire"
Good stuff.. Ordered from here before
ChiefArcher
http://coolneon.com/.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
Varad doesn't seem to have their own website, but I've seen these in the car stereo world. You'd have to have a 12V DC power source at home, but that shouldn't be too hard to set up.
Overrated / Underrated : Moderation
Plain ol' Rope Light is generally the best way to go, as it is spliceable and dimmable and relatively inexpensive.
bp
There's all sorts of interesting lighting possibilities from places like Lucifer Lighting.
I am a lighting product engineer for GE, and our new 'RealLight'(tm) bulbs are very good for this type of lighting. Also, you'd be patronizing a fellow /.er :-))
Patronizing mode on. Since you're new here, we typically post a link whenver possible. Especially if our employers use websites that require Java to successfully navigate ("Mouse over for more information" is not acceptable). I'm not dogging you for working for a mega-corp, just that if you expect someone to look at what you're doing (and believe me, I was interested for 7-8 minutes), you need to help us out. I'm not familiar with all your product lines, you will undoubtedly be more efficient navigating them and pointing out the wonderful fruits of your labor. 5 minutes of your time finding the product you recommend, whose sale inflates your paychecks/ bonuses, are 5 minutes that 50 or more people here won't have to spend. Patronizing mode off**
I don't use Java -- the most obnoxious non-stop moving, color cycling ads that are so distracting that I can't read the text are flash -- which won't show up on my machine with Java and Javascript disabled.
FlatLight by E-Lite technologies is an EL strip that can come in lengths of 300 feet and several different widths. Not sure if you can get smaller lenghts. It gets quite expensive, though. 300 feet of inch-wide strip is $1600. You can do some pretty kickass stuff with it, though.
I'ld recommend that you go with LEDs instead. Lots more flexibility. Far more options.
Let me give you a few of the links from the upcoming LED section of my site. (Yep, that was a plug.)
American Science and Surplus
Inner Mountain Outfitters
Gilway
Superbright LEDs
Overall you'll find that they'll work with any decent source of 3.5 to 6 volt (depending on the LED) current, which includes the cheesy little plug-in transformers that you can buy at Radio Shack. But they'll work better off battery power or some other means that is truly DC. I ran a tiny custom jobbie in my bathroom as a functional light source for weeks, all running off standard nine-volt batteries. I just turned it on and left it on to see how long it would last. These, BTW, were rebuilt versions of the LED-based clip-on lights that they sell for bike riders.
Of course if you've got a cheap supply of watch batteries or have a recharger for them then you could just hang photons about the place.
Lastly, if you're just going for cool low-level lighting, good old FLAME can be plenty of fun. In other words, don't dismiss the possibilities of oil lamps and such until you've tried them. Properly set up, especially if they're indirect, they give a just variable enough glow to be quite satisfying. I've also had fun with building custom lamps based on isopropyl alcohol. You know, the stuff sold for 99 cents a bottle to put on small cuts. A big (say, two inches around) alcohol flame in a deep container with a well setup oxygen supply will last for hours. Since the flame isn't very hot, is non-toxic, and blows out readily it's easy to experiment using things like soup bowls while you figure out what you want to do. Yo could cheat and go somewhere like Illuminations (I'm not providing a link, there are too many mall businesses as it is) and buy wicks, but you shouldn't need to bother.
And with all of this the fire department has only come by here once (damn those witnesses!).
Rustin
Data is the lever, rigor the fulcrum, brains the force that drives it all.