Third Round of Gear

Today was a slow day for deliveries.  Only two of the three scheduled deliveries arrived, but I was as impressed with the LED lights as I had hoped to be.

The lights come on a spool as shown above.  They’re surprisingly bright, so much so that when the camera focused on them it adjusted its aperture and everything else appears basically black.  The strip is around 3/8″ wide and has an adhesive backing with protective paper on it.  I hear the adhesive backing isn’t all that great, so I’m not planning on counting on it.  I’m quite pleased with the lights so far.

After testing just the lights, I hooked up the remote control module, and when I first connected power, they started blinking like a strobe light!  I was wondering if I had a loose wire connection or something like that going on, but it was actually a lighting mode that the remote offered, and somehow or another I must have pressed that button.  Either way, changing modes quickly brought the lights back to a solid “on” state.

What is really fantastic about the remote, besides the ability to turn the lights on and off remotely, is that it has an electronic dimmer function.  Given how bright these lights are, that’s going to be really helpful.  It has dedicated buttons for 100% illumination, 50%, and 25%.  It also has brightness up/down buttons that appear to adjust the power in 5% increments.  I can’t wait to get this mounted in the trailer and see how it works in a real-world application.

I also received 25′ of PEX piping/tubing.  I’m planning on using this to connect the water pump to the water heater.  However, after reading the manual for the water pump today (yes, I read the manuals), it suggests using flexible tubing instead of rigid piping (like this PEX) for at least the first foot or so on both sides of the pump.  So now I’m off to shop for flexible tubing… and this is why it takes so much time to build stuff.

 

3 thoughts on “Third Round of Gear”

  1. I am looking forward to seeing your LED lights. I have been looking for undercabinent lighting and it appears this may be a solution for that area of a house also.

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