Re: Automatable lighting (LED?) for my loft?

[Gerry Duprey <gerry@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Howdy,

> The biggest problem with the lighting in the loft is that most of the
walls are at 45 Deg! Not many places to put traditional lighting - maybe
one or two of the 'strung' LV lighting systems though. I wonder if I could
modify one of these?

Worse, given the apparent headroom, nearly all overhead lighting looks like
it's going to be casting shadows.  Certainly a challenge.

That said, I think overhead lighting is over rated.  Other than when
cleaning
(when I want lots of light), I find overhead lights are generally harsh and
unpleasant (even with nice fixtures).  I think you can light better and
more
attractively with table lamps and perhaps some wall sconces or other
wall/table lights.  I think your idea of long continuous bars of lights in
the
corners will probably be somewhat useful for lighting, but should be
wonderful
for mood and accents.

> My thoughts so far with the LED stuff was to have a series of longish
'bar' fixtures with diffusers to give a uniform wash along a length of
wall. Maybe a whole load of RGB LED's at quite short spacing to achieve
this - what do you think? Can a whole group of lower power LED's be driven
in parallel from a single output? I guess I'd need an amplifier to do this?
I'm thinking maybe a meter long fixture with 30-40 Led's even?

The amp board I mentioned with the transistors I'm using can drive 1 AMP
per
color, or about 50 SuperBright RGBLEDs.  You definetly could not directly
drive 50 RGBLEDs from a controller without a driver as those controller
outputs top out at 20ma and for 40 LEDs, you'd need .8 amps.  You can build
one of the other amp circuits in the cad/ directory with MOSFETs and drive
up
to 6 AMPs (300 SuperBright LEDs) and you can use multiple amp boards to
drive
even more.  And if with other MOSFET choices and good wiring practices, you
could move up to 24AMPs per color (or 1,200 SuperBright LEDs).

> Is this how the colour kinetix type systems work?

I don't know, but I'm sure it's something like that.  I suspect the big
difference (besides price and flexibility) is that they *likely* use
constant
current drivers, so you can add/remove LED segments without having to
adjust
the current limiting resistors.  But for fairly static (that is, a fixed
number of RGB LEDs that doesn't change often), it's over kill.

Given the size of the space, I think you've got a great opportunity there
to
play with LED lighting.  If you do decide to do the wash stuff, I'd love to
see some pictures when you get it don.

Best of luck,

Gerry
--
Gerry Duprey
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.cdp1802.org