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Light Strips for Home Decoration? 37

Posted by Cliff from the if-its-good-enough-for-the-computer dept.
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"?
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Light Strips for Home Decoration? More

Light Strips for Home Decoration?

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  • Eighth Reality. (Score:5, Informative)

    by ChiefArcher ( 1753 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @12:37PM (#4282141) Homepage Journal
    http://www.eighthreality.com/

    Look under the illuminescense category for "EL-Wire"

    Good stuff.. Ordered from here before ....

    ChiefArcher
  • maplin.co.uk sell strips for case mods and car mods

    not over 1.5m though

    19.99 for about 50cm

    We also have a custom neon place near by, try your local area.

  • coolneon.com (Score:3, Informative)

    by LordNimon ( 85072 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @12:56PM (#4282276)
    http://coolneon.com/ [coolneon.com].

  • VARAD (Score:2, Informative)

    by mhesseltine ( 541806 )
    Varad [google.com] 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.

  • XMas (Score:2)

    by Samus ( 1382 )
    I remember seeing some xmas lights like this along some peoples walkways last year. I didn't think it looked very good but there were a few of them around. After halloween you should be able to find them.

  • Pool lights? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by okie_rhce ( 224078 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @01:43PM (#4282680)
    I have a friend who's mother has a pool. Around the lip of the pool is a solid "band" that changes color. Its almost like a multi-color indiglo. Maybe ask a pool shop?
    • These are usually plastic "fiber optics". Basicly is a light pipe like some cases use for LED lights. It has a remotely located light generator and a color disk that rotates, producing the changing color.

      My father's pool has one of these setup in a waterfall and as the main light for the bottom of the pool. Its a real pretty effect and with some work you could adapt it to an inside home setting. The light generator does get hot so placement might be an issue.

      Honig

  • Rope Light (Score:3, Informative)

    by Black Perl ( 12686 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @02:11PM (#4282914)
    Plain ol' Rope Light [noveltylights.com] is generally the best way to go, as it is spliceable and dimmable and relatively inexpensive.
  • Most EL works just fine from 120V AC. It would be silly to convert your wall power to DC just to invert it back up to drive the EL.

    Buy a sample and plug it into the wall (safely!). If it works, buy a bunch. I did this myself while harvesting EL backlights from dead LCD displays. It worked great.

    • Brightness in EL is a function of frequency and voltage. With an inverter, you are going to get 200V or so and 800 to 4000Hz, for a much brighter result. Less amps, too, which is safer than the direct plugging method, fuse or no fuse.

      Heavy Duty Technical Data [coolight.com]

  • Custom lighting (Score:3, Informative)

    by mosch ( 204 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @02:23PM (#4283004) Homepage
    There's all sorts of interesting lighting possibilities from places like Lucifer Lighting [luciferlighting.com].

  • FlatLight (Score:3, Informative)

    by jpmkm ( 160526 ) on Wednesday September 18, 2002 @04:51PM (#4284351) Homepage
    FlatLight [e-lite.com] by E-Lite technologies [e-lite.com] 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.
  • You can get them at lots of places. Even Wal-Mart has started carrying rope lights in the lighting section. But there is something you have to be careful about on these.

    Before making a BIG purchase of rope lights for my gameroom, I bought two brands. I wanted the color blue. One strand was, indeed blue. The other strand said blue, but its color (unlit) was obviously purple!

    You know what? When lit, the purple one actually was blue and looked great. But the blue one? Turns out that in low lighting, it looked more like white lights with a faint blue glow from the tube.

    So be careful, if you do use rope lights, to determine the quality of the color produced by them before you use them.

    BTW, Wal-Mart also has automotive neon lights for cheap. But I noticed something. A few months after being on display, running 24x7, all of their demo tubes have started experiencing problems. They don't glow anymore. Kind of arc around like one of those balls you put your hand on and see the sparks inside the glass sphere.
  • Many people are selling the electro-luminescent "wire" on there, in 15, 20 and even 30 foot lengths, pretty cheap, too - try this search [ebay.com].

    Also, if you search on Ebay for "pc neon" - you will get some references to various clear LED lit fans that would make for interesting case mods (provided you keep the fans clean).

  • 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 [reedandwright.com]. (Yep, that was a plug.)

    American Science and Surplus [sciplus.com]
    Inner Mountain Outfitters [caves.org]
    Gilway [gilway.com]
    Superbright LEDs [superbrightleds.com]
    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 photon [photonlight.com]s 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
    • But oil lamps don't really conjure up that whole Tron thing quite so well, do they?
      • But oil lamps don't really conjure up that whole Tron thing quite so well, do they?
        Used conventionally, no. But try a two foot channel (metal gutter will do fine) blocked from direct view and filled with flaming alcohol. Reflect that puppy off something appropriate (a sheet of masonite painted sky blue or with a sheet of reflective mylar glued to it) and you can get some pretty spacey effects on a beer budget. Also, doing this is so cheap that most people are far more likely to experiment with it then they are with the specially mail-ordered, took-six-weeks-to-get-it light strip that they can't afford to/aren't willing to replace.
        Of course another cool cheap trick is to put a row of cheap power strips on your ceiling, paint them to match what they're sitting on, and plug in tons of those cheap little electroluminescent night lights. That will give you rows of blue and green lights along your walls and/or ceiling. Careful and subdued use of Glow In the Dark paint and those little GITD dots sold for astronomy kits can help complete the look. (Don't go overboard; less is more. It's much easier to add then to take away.)
        Keep in mind that anything bought in bulk counts as expensive, so check out your local 99 cent/discount store for supplies as the cheesy $2.50 power strip that you would normally scoff at may be perfect for this.
        I'm telling you, as somebody who stripped his bathroom down to the plaster, smeared on thin smears of plaster (mixed with those funky 3M reflective balls and man, was that a waste of money), and then covered it all with stain and then eight coats of varnish, all to look better when seen in a combination of electroluminescent and oil lamp lighting, each situation and each person's taste is different. And since this stuff is so cool precisely because it creates a low-level response, one should really experiment as much as possible.
        BTW, if, like me, you're *truly* insane, then you can get some great silvery "high tech" effects by mixing small amounts of silver bronzing powder (ideally in two or more similar shades) into varnish and applying it to a surface here and there. Words of caution: you will want to use a wide brush (ideally over 1.5 inches) that has had almost all the bristle cut off. This gives you a short, even stroke. Chinese sumi-ei brushes work great.
        You can get all the supplies for this here [pearlpaint.com] or at your neighborhood art supply store. Check prices as they can vary by as much as 500% for the same item.
        Last point. If you look at a movie like TRON you'll find that much of the power of the effect is it's comprehensiveness. There must be an absolute minimum of exceptions to the color scheme. If you can match it to the dominant color (charcoal grey may be more practical and just as effective as black) then do so. Light switch plates. alarm clocks, everything. If you're afraid that you might change your mind tomorrow then do the job in tempera paints. They're very cheap, quick to apply, and let's face it, on most plastic they'll start to flake off pretty fast anyway, making them a low-risk test indeed. The other extreme is nail polish. And let me assure you, nail polish is a pain in the butt to apply. It dries very fast, keeping every little ridge you left in it and some you may not have (don't paint on too much at a time). But . . . it comes in every Tron-ish color there is, expecially if you check out the girly stores where they have brands like Smashmouth and Pure Ice (I got a great sixties look on my Mac's speakers with some silver, gloss over matte) Also check out Old Navy as a late night "I'm gonna do this *now* dammit!" source. (Ain't excessive caffeine grand?)
        So, what is the short form?
        Do cheap stuff first in several media so that you can figure out what you like. (Parties are a great excuse.)
        Light strips are good, flat panel night lights are better.
        Indirect lighting, attention to color scheme, and funky materials like mylar blankets, plain glow in the dark stickers, and nail polish are all good ways to finish things off.
        Have a great time and be sure to post your results somewhere when you're done.
        Rustin

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