All,
I need so feedback on my project. My goal is to light up my train room WS2812 or APA102’s I currently testing with WS2812’s This will be the rooms primary source of light. I just can seem to get enough light out of these. I can’t seem to find any lumen out of for these so I can’t even determine how many strips I would need.
Is this even possible am I asking to much for the current technology?
Would I be better off looking at going with Philips Hue produces for light a room
Thanks for any feedback
Greg
You can definately do it. I would go for 144led/m. I would usually, that gives you about 120lumens/m. A 60w bulb gives off about 400 lumens, so you would need about 4m of strip to equal one bulb.
Sounds like you need something like 150 lumens per square meter, or about 15 lumens per sq ft.
http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/light-level-rooms-d_708.html
And this suggests around 1000 lumens per meter of 144/m LED strips.
https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=47362
So for a small 100 SF room, you might need 15 meters of strips, if it’s the sole light source. If it’s only a portion of the room, additive to other ambient lighting, you could probably get the effect with much less.
[EDIT: using “Home” level 150/m2 lighting instead of “Mechanical Workshop” 1000/m2]
What kind of lighting are you doing? is it just for the room light itself? My father has tasked me to add some LEDs to his train room. Im re-using some ws2812B strips. have strips on the exterior edge, and a couple strips under some ramps and in the tunnels.
havent got to programming much on it yet.
empirically, I used about 15m of ws2801 60leds/m strip to light up a porch of 20ft x 10 ft and it was plenty bright.
If you don’t need the color option, or the ability to program individual LEDs in the strip, some straightforward white 12-volt LEDs will simplify things.
@Randal_B
The plan would be to setup a fast clock and do a 24hr day in about 2 hours so sunrise to sunset and through the night turning on and off lights all over the layout.
Having both Hue bulbs and a lot of 2812’s, I can say that for what you described, you should pry go with the Hue lights (sorry, I know I’m going against the group here…). They actually have a pretty active SDK environment, and it’s not too tough to learn.
There are several benefits here. The first is that it’s not difficult to program in a bunch of languages. The second is that you can get good third party apps for Andriod/iOS if you want to do other things without a lot of work.
Yes, they are pricey, but they just work, and they work well. I’ve got 14 in two rooms, and it’s a lot of fun. I am also working on adding a small Photon/FastLED controlled 2812 setup that "see’'s"the color in the room, and runs it’s own program to sorta match generically. My bar lights are gonna be cool, network driven, and interactive. I did buy the Hue strip, but that’s a lot of money for a bad LED strip. The bulbs are great, don’t bother with the strips.
@Peter_Buelow
Peter
How are the Hue bulbs with Blue and green?
I have heard they lack in those colors?
All,
Thanks for your feedback
Greg
It depends on how you choose to look at it. They don’t have the super deep blue and green (although the full green is very pleasant tone), but in a big room, where you are filling it, they work fairly well. Night quite 2812 blue, but I won’t complain.
If you choose not to buy them because they don’t faithfully saturate all the colors, then so be it, but what you get in a package that just works plus the apps, I think it’s worth it.
Someday, Alexa will work better with them. Then I’ll be in heavan.