Yesdog
Well-Known Member
Was pretty happy with how this turned out in the end, gonna share it here even though its the jankiest jank possible.
I bought a few meters of some LED grow-light under-lighting strips. The same stuff you're most likely to see for under-lighting at your local bar or whatnot, but with the 4:1 red/blue LED mix. They're cheap as dirt, I spent about $20 on enough to make 2 shelves worth. The plan was to just convert a few of my shelves so I could move clones or plants there temporarily, and if i had nothing to put there, I could just use it as a shelf again! Also as long as the shelf is below eye level, the installation is virtually invisible.
Materials:
LED strips
duct tape
packing tape
solder and iron
22awg solid core wire
small nails
zip ties
The adhesive on these strips is 98% worthless, so to keep the strips mounted I just made a 'mask' out of packing tape and duct tape. Packing tape for the clear area where the strips are, duct tape for everything between as a real adhesive. The masking tape I'm sure is screwing with the lighting quality a bit, but these LED strips anyways had a clear gel 'filler' on the face on the strip, so figured adding 1/4mm of extra clear plastic wouldn't hurt. I had to cut some holes in the masking tape every 6" or so for venting. I also redid the wiring so each strip is powered directly from the DC plug, keeping all the extra current off of the other strips. This reduced my heat down to basically nothing, can keep my hand there indefinitely.
I used the small nails and zipties at the end of each strip to hold the end in place, to nail down the mask (in some places randomly), then the ziptie on top of the nail heads to hold the soldered connections flush. This also helps keep a bunch of tensions off of the shitty tape mask, and holds the strips semi-taught at each end.
I don't trust my soldering skills that much, but I trust those solderless LED strip connectors even less- they were giving me lots of problems initially, so just soldered instead. The gel coating on these strips makes it almost impossible to fit into those damn connectors anyways.
I'm also on about a week now of running the installation- it's as boring as I could have hoped, and all the tape and everything stayed in place.
EDIT: oh, and right, if you have some decent glue, obviously go that route instead of the tape. Just make sure it can withstand a bit of heat, and it should be fine. I would however still recommend some sort of physical attachment at the ends (nails and zip ties in my case) to keep the strips from 'peeling' off near the ends.
I bought a few meters of some LED grow-light under-lighting strips. The same stuff you're most likely to see for under-lighting at your local bar or whatnot, but with the 4:1 red/blue LED mix. They're cheap as dirt, I spent about $20 on enough to make 2 shelves worth. The plan was to just convert a few of my shelves so I could move clones or plants there temporarily, and if i had nothing to put there, I could just use it as a shelf again! Also as long as the shelf is below eye level, the installation is virtually invisible.
Materials:
LED strips
duct tape
packing tape
solder and iron
22awg solid core wire
small nails
zip ties
The adhesive on these strips is 98% worthless, so to keep the strips mounted I just made a 'mask' out of packing tape and duct tape. Packing tape for the clear area where the strips are, duct tape for everything between as a real adhesive. The masking tape I'm sure is screwing with the lighting quality a bit, but these LED strips anyways had a clear gel 'filler' on the face on the strip, so figured adding 1/4mm of extra clear plastic wouldn't hurt. I had to cut some holes in the masking tape every 6" or so for venting. I also redid the wiring so each strip is powered directly from the DC plug, keeping all the extra current off of the other strips. This reduced my heat down to basically nothing, can keep my hand there indefinitely.
I used the small nails and zipties at the end of each strip to hold the end in place, to nail down the mask (in some places randomly), then the ziptie on top of the nail heads to hold the soldered connections flush. This also helps keep a bunch of tensions off of the shitty tape mask, and holds the strips semi-taught at each end.
I don't trust my soldering skills that much, but I trust those solderless LED strip connectors even less- they were giving me lots of problems initially, so just soldered instead. The gel coating on these strips makes it almost impossible to fit into those damn connectors anyways.
I'm also on about a week now of running the installation- it's as boring as I could have hoped, and all the tape and everything stayed in place.
EDIT: oh, and right, if you have some decent glue, obviously go that route instead of the tape. Just make sure it can withstand a bit of heat, and it should be fine. I would however still recommend some sort of physical attachment at the ends (nails and zip ties in my case) to keep the strips from 'peeling' off near the ends.
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