Anyone have good pointers for LEDs to use for building and other accent lighting? Something that will mimic a GOW bulb in brightness and tone? I’m not looking for the stark bright white that a lot of LEDs that Ive found so far.
Bob, I use the inexpensive, $.99, solar powered pathway lights from Wal-Mart, and either build the solar panel into the building or just cut a 1 3/4" hole with a hole saw and push the whole head in the hole and silicone around it. Have had some out side for over 3 years now with only 1 failure which turned out to be a bad battery. Of course building them in looks better but is a little bit more time consuming my favorite is chimneys see this year’s MIK challenge (cracker house). Recently I have but one in a window and it works just doesn’t get a full charge so hence doesn’t stay on as long but that’s good if it is a business and light goes off when the owner goes home. found that most last 3 to 4 hours and I have a custom blinking red one on my city water tower that stays on dusk to dawn. The thing I like about them is they don’t all come on or go off at the same time and extra led’s added to their circuits dims them a little but makes them last about 25% longer. To get rid of the to bright whiteness I just paint them with a yellow highlighter, + no wires and don’t have to turn them on or off, hope tis helps, Bill
Bob McCown said:
Anyone have good pointers for LEDs to use for building and other accent lighting? Something that will mimic a GOW bulb in brightness and tone? I’m not looking for the stark bright white that a lot of LEDs that Ive found so far.
You MIGHT take a look at Miniatronics and their misspelled “Yeloglo” https://miniatronics.com/search?type=product&q=yeloglo
I bought a set of on sale “warm white” LED Christmas tree lights, and they do cast a nicer glow then the “bright white” LEDs. To make them yellower, you could colour their lenses with a yellow marker, or the clear amber paint the car modelers use to paint turn signal lenses on model cars.
In my Tyco 10 wheelers, I actually use a bright yellow LED to simulate an oil lamp.
Since I get them free from old signs we replace, I’m using commercial LED modules. They are a very harsh bright white. To mitigate that, I coat the inside of the roof with yellow and orange vinyl and aim the LEDs up at the roof, reflecting the color. Works very well for me.
The modules are 12 volt and I power everything off the track using it as a bussbar for constant 12 volt power.
Bob
While I have used the cheap solar lights and taken them apart and put them in buildings, I find that the components are so cheap they just fall apart after a while.
And there are many many on the market so hard to know what you are getting until you take them apart and see.
So what I have done is buy the LED strip lights, usually run about $15 or less for many feet of them, and they are designed to operate off of 12V DC. Usually cut them into 3 light pieces. Colors from cool to warm are available, and you can always dab some warm color craft paint on them. There are a few ways to power them, one is using 110C AC and a wall wart, another is a hard wired garden light transformer which comes with a built in timer, running of 110V AC and producing 12V dc, and finally, you could use a 12V sealed lead acid battery powered by a solar panel. All except the cheap solar path light need wires from the power source to the LED in your buildings
So maybe food for thought
Jerry
Bob McCown said:
Anyone have good pointers for LEDs to use for building and other accent lighting? Something that will mimic a GOW bulb in brightness and tone? I’m not looking for the stark bright white that a lot of LEDs that Ive found so far.
Yes,
If you are after the one GOW bulb/accent lighting look it’s pretty easy but it don’t blow my dress up. Remember you can easily color a clear white LED with the “sharpie” of you’re,your choice. You can also grind down the top/sides/corner of a rounded 5mm Light Emitting Diode as long as you don’t mess with the anode 22.5 angles on a clear/white rounded LED with a sharpie …
Shut up Rooster
Rooster said:
Bob McCown said:
Anyone have good pointers for LEDs to use for building and other accent lighting? Something that will mimic a GOW bulb in brightness and tone? I’m not looking for the stark bright white that a lot of LEDs that Ive found so far.
Yes,
If you are after the one GOW bulb/accent lighting look it’s pretty easy but it don’t blow my dress up. Remember you can easily color a clear white LED with the “sharpie” of you’re,your choice. You can also grind down the top/sides/corner of a rounded 5mm Light Emitting Diode as long as you don’t mess with the anode 22.5 angles on a clear/white rounded LED with a sharpie …
Shut up Rooster
I need to try this. I have several places where I tried using 18V GOW bulbs, but with my auto timer running lights 10-14 hrs a day / 365 days a year, they did not last long.
The sharpie trick works well to change the color of the LEDs. Make sure the marker dries before touching them and reapply after it is assembled. I like to do two coats of marker on my bulbs.
I used one of those voltage dropping circuit Buck boards with the Rectifier and capacitor spoken about in my car lighting thread. I then put in an orange and a red flickering LED in parallel to look like a fireplace in my log cabin. It looks good. I got the idea from doing the same thing in my engine fireboxes.
I plan to do the same thing but with yellow flickering LEDs to look like candle lighting. But not sure how that looks yet. My trains are turn of the last century time period so I don’t want anything too bright either. If it is too yellow I will try to mark orange stripes on the bulbs to get that flame coloration.
I use the “warm white” tape lights Bob, in rolls of 16’ for about $10. Cut to length and solder the wires on.
The silicone waterproofing is fine; but for additional application of yellow or orange sharpie (or translucent craft paint, I’ve heard of), you might use the non-waterproof and apply the colorant to the LED’s directly, and, I suppose, lay a bead of clear RTV over that for waterproofing and color fixing.
Cliff, How many sections do you need to illuminate a building and what is RTV?
Bill, I’d guess that an 15cm strip (having 9 LED’s) would be plenty for a smaller (~12"x12") building.
At least in the type I’ve been using, you can cut the tape every 5cm, each section of which contains 3 LED’s.
Since the tape is fairly cheap, you can start with longer strips, and cut some off if it turns out to be too bright.
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I use the 3mm and 5mm 12v LED’s sold on eBay, they also have a resistor with them and sold in 20 packs for around $10. I then control my brightness with a resistor at each bulb, or group of LEDs depending how they are used. I use an old model train transformer to power the LED’s and set to around 12v’s, this will power the entire lighting for all my building, etc. I also us the very small LEDs for lamps and lanterns and power the same way with resistors used for brightness. The thought here is 12v LEDs can do everything and resistors control brightness. I also use the soft white LEDs over the bright white LEDs in most lighting applications as the color looks more correct to the real world, too bright looks toy like. For me being a modeler first I try to use and do what brings the correct look to the actual world. I realize we all do what works for us and I like a system where all you do is power each structure, etc. with 12v’s and your brightness are all set to each application as needed. I try to use the KISS System for all my applications, this way I get the same results and have full control of what I do.
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I found some different LED strips, as the rolls have too many lights for me.
They are designed for backing adverts/signs and are already wired together, so it is easy to un-solder or just snip the wires. What you don’t see in the pic is the 3M sticky tape at the back holding them together. Each piece of 2 LEDs can be pulled off the backing and used separately, or kept as a string of 6" wire and 2 LEDs, etc…
I intended to use them in my next coach, which hasn’t happened yet.
I’ve been thinking of modeling a state penitentiary on my layout so I have been looking at these lately.
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Until reading your reply, I had been under the impression that LEDs were either on or off and dimming was obtained by progressively turning each LED in a group.
John when you say you adjust brightness with multiple LEDs, am I assuming this is placing them in series between various rooms or buildings. Is this correct?
How do you determine the ohms you need for dimming? Or Is this trial and error and in this case how many types of resistors do you use?
Why not just use a pot?
Let’s assume that the LED has a VF of 2.0v, an IF of 20 mA, and our power supply has 5v. If we wanted a standard current limiting resistor it would have to be 150 ohms to limit the current to 20 mA.
With a pot, we also want a 150 ohm fixed resistor in series. The reason for this is that the pot will go down to 0 ohms, and we don’t want to blow anything up in that case. So by putting the 150 ohm resistor in there, there will be a maximum current of 20 mA through the LED.
Let’s also say that we want the LED current to go down to 1 mA. Unless the pot has a super high resistance, it won’t go down to 0 mA, and 1 mA seems like a reasonable lower limit. To make that work, our pot needs to be about 2K Ohms.
Going through the math, the maximum power dissipation on the pot is when it is at about 8%, and the resistance is 160 ohms. In this case the dissipation in the pot is about 0.016 watts – which is fine for almost every pot. Even so, it is an important step to make sure you won’t be burning up your pot.
But here is the important thing: The human eye has a logarithmic response to brightness. Let’s say that we have 100% power going through the LED and we want to turn it down. It needs to go down to about 50% before we sense that as being reasonable. The next step down would be at 25%, etc.
Put a different way, if our knob was marked 1 to 10, then 10 would be 100%, 9 would be 50%, 8=25%, 7=12%, 6=6%, 5=3%, etc.
The problem is that a standard pot doesn’t quite do that. It will work, and the LED will be dimmed. But a large part of the pots range (maybe 50%) will essentially be useless, producing very little change in brightness.
You might be able to use an audio pot, which has a logarithmic taper, but I’m guessing that the log part is in the wrong direction.
On a side note it might not give you the effect that you are after. However a lot of pot “WAS” burned up in the process of the thought.
Does that make sense?
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I’ll get back to you after I find the definition of pot. I really need a good book to re-introduce my brain to electricity.
If you stick with a 12vdc set of led tape, panels, individual luminaires, etc., just feed it all from an old 12vdc power pack. Should have plenty of amps, and you’ll have dimming. When you eventually acquire many buildings and a large load, you can invest in a larger variable power supply.
My 2 cents…
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