Thread: Plug and Play LED Spot Lighting

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Piraticalstyle- Give me some time, I'll post some pics of them illuminating my patio or something. The set I started building were based on too high a voltage, and would get really hot. I am awaiting fresh parts, and once I have them I will complete my spots and post them up.

Nepboard- how long of a wire do you figure you can run on a USB cable to power the LEDs? 100 feet? Is the wire in a USB cable about the same as phone cord?

I will try to get some shots this weekend. I did give them a test run after I made them and they were perfect (for my tastes)I will say that the 10mm throws a nice illluminating light.

The wire is 22/2. The longest run I did was about 45 feet on four of the 20 lights I made. The shortest was about 10 feet. I am making the power supply/usb hubs look like a rock that I will place in the center of my cemetery. Therefore the 45 foot runs will give me 90 feet of coverage from center. (45 feet each way)

Nepboard, I was thinking of using cat5e cable. I would have to solder the sockets and figure out which wire to make the pos and neg. I would have to cut the plug off the other end and solder that to the LED/resistor etc. I'm pretty sure I could figure all of that out. I would also have to figure out a way to mount the sockets into a box of some sort. But before I undertake buying and building, do you think cat5e could handle LED spots at 75 feet? Or do you think there would be a power loss dimming the LEDs? It sure would be shweet to just plug the spots in.

MikeBru, I'm sure you could probably just use a phone line cord. They're probably less expensive and from what I understand, they just have less wires in the middle. I always wanted to experiment with phone cord lines!

Yeah, I was thinking of phone cord wire. But, I have a source for some really cheap cat5e, I can't seem to find phone cord that long here, and the only phone cord I do find is white or bone in color. Truth is, I already have lamp cord, and will probably end up going with that even though it won't terminate in a handy plug. But I do still want to know if a long run of cat5e or phone cord would light a LED without degradation at 75-100'. I suspect it would, just looking for some confirmation.

I love this! I just tried it with some of the LED spotlights I made last year and it works perfectly! Also, I tried using a LED tealight and it also works! All I did was take out the battery compartment and connect the wires from the usb to the wires going to the little chip in the led (from the battery compartment) There are so many more possibilities now! Thanks again!

Those look great. I wish I had the technical knowledge to pull that off but I love seeing the results posted

MikeBru,
I was going to use cat5 cable at first because of its availability and price. But after talking with our IT geeks here at work the recommendation was to use stranded 22-24 gauge wire instead. Per the guys stranded wire will have less degradation than a single solid wire. Plus, when I started looking at the jacks, the tool to put the wire in the jacks, and the receptacles it got pretty pricey (for what I wanted, CHEAP). It turned out the be the same with phone wire and jacks. Remember that I did get the hubs and usb connectors for nothing and the wire was 35 bucks for 1000 feet. Go to a local electrical supply store and see what they have for 22/2 wire. The roll I bought had 2 inches of dust on it, not much demand for it. Another thing about stranded wire vs solid is that it is real pliable and rolls up/stores nicely. I am sure that any way that you choose will work fine. Working with 100-200 milliamps it doesn’t take much.

Halloweenie315 I am glad it worked for you!!