11
votes
Help adding LED lighting to bookcases
Hi! My partner and I want to follow this guide and add LED strip lighting to bookcases we're putting up. Partner has significant experience with assembly/DIY home improvement projects, I have minimal but nonzero experience with soldering. We are both a bit lost on how to pick LED strip lighting and a controller.
Info about our setup:
- We will have several bookcases next to each other
- We would rather drill a slightly bigger hole in the side of the cases to pass the strip itself in between the cases rather than deal with extra soldering joints
- We have picked out conduit already (basically all of the non-electrical components)
- There are seven shelves on each case so we'll need seven LED strips
- There will be roughly 10 feet (a bit less) of strips per shelf, collectively across all the cases
- We would like to have RGB controls, but we don't care about syncing to music
Questions:
- What LED strips would you recommend? Longevity being probably the most important part
- What controller/power supply should we use? Keep in mind neither of us is super experienced with this kind of thing so the less complicated the better
- Anything else I should be asking that I'm not? Any advice in general?
Edit: Realized I sent the wrong link originally. This is the guide we're following.
This is a noname local firm, but Casalux (I think its an Aldi Germany exclusive brand) has good led strips. I have one that I'm using on my balcony, its been out in sun ans weather for 5 years and its still going strong
I think when I made my 9' live edge redwood slab bookshelves, I used a custom (DIY) build with components from https://www.superbrightleds.com/. It was several years ago, but I'm pretty sure this was the vendor. The two power supplies fit within some fake books I bought and run three shelves each. Here it is during the build, the strips are embedded in an groove cut in the back of each slab, so the light bounces off the back white wall. https://imgur.com/a/gtBxXiF
Each strip can be programmed individually if desired.
Could you share some photos of the book shel(f|ves), and if possible, a quick mock up of what you're envisioning? I did two projects similar to what you're describing over the last few years, but I'm not sure how similar or if I can offer anything of value, just from the text of the post. I'm too visual of a person.
Yep! Here's a picture of a mockup: https://imgur.com/a/99rO1bR. There's a fireplace in between the columns. Also I just realized I probably sent the wrong link in the OP, this page has some photos like this one of their project
Thanks, that's helpful. Based on what you're describing, here's some thoughts and my version of answers to your questions:
Off the bat: 7 shelves at around 10 feet each roughts out to 70 feet of LED strips. At that total length, you'll want to avoid lower voltage strips (e.g. 5V USB-powered strips). 5V strips pull too much DC amperage over long runs, and will have more significant voltage drop (they will dim significantly and change color towards the end). Higher voltage (24V) strips trade higher voltage for less amperage, which keeps your lights more evenly bright across all 7 shelves.
A good strip for this kind of setup would be something like this 24V strip. It’s an RGBCCT strip (5-in-1), meaning you get both RGB colors plus dedicated warm white and cool white colors. Most LED strips, including the one I linked, are "cuttable" -- you just need to make sure you're cutting right on the marked copper solder pads (see the "scissor" mark). This allows you to trim each run to the shelf width you need, to the nearest allowed cut mark. The downside of cutting is that you'll have to wire each segment back to your controller.
To connect them, you could solder, or you can use solderless board-to-wire connectors. I've used similar solderless connectors before, but found them to be difficult to use. Perhaps that's because I was using IP68 rated LED's with a gel like cover that was a pain to get through, but ultimately, I found soldering and heat shrinking to be much better. Given that you don't need waterproof and the product I linked does not have that gel like cover, YMMV. If you do use connectors like this, just be sure your connectors and wire gauges are all compatible.
Given your situation, I'd lean towards running individual wires from each shelf back down to a central point. I'd use 20 gauge six-conductor wire. Connect the wire to each shelf's run of LEDs (or use the clip connectors), heat shrink the ends, and terminate all 7 shelf runs inside a small project box at the bottom. Inside the box, you can use some WAGO 221 lever nuts to cleanly tie all the matching wires together (one block for positive, one for each color channel). If your bookshelves are wood, you could use small wire tacks to secure and hide the wires along the back frame.
If having the wires of all seven shelves running down the back is too daunting, you could piggyback/daisy-chain them shelf-to-shelf, but if one strip connection ever fails, it takes out every shelf downstream of it. Running them home to a central box prevents that.
To answer your specific questions:
For the two projects I've used LED strips for, I used random/off-brand spools and both have held up fine with regular use over the last few years. The biggest key to longevity is heat dissipation. You'll likely be fine without a heat sink for your use case, but if you want, you can install them into aluminum channels with diffusers. The aluminum can work as a heat sink, and the diffusers blend away the individual dots of light, if they're noticable.
You'll need two separate pieces here: a controller and a 24V power supply.
For the controller, something like this is easy to use, as it has push-terminals built right into it. Keep in mind that Gledopto model runs on Zigbee (works with Hue, Zigbee Echos, or Home Assistant), so if you just want simple Wi-Fi/phone control without a hub, or a remote control, just search for other 24V RGBCCT controllers.
For the power supply, across 70 feet you'll want around 240W to 350W, a Mean Well LRS-350-24 (350W) would be the way to go. It will run cool and lasts practically forever, but you'll have to wire an AC appliance power cord into its screw terminals yourself. Very easy to do.
While the idea of splicing and wiring might seem a little daunting at first, doing it with spools and lever nuts is really straightforward once you get going. Doing it this way saves you a ton of cost and avoids having an ugly mess of multiple wall plugs or bulky hubs trying to power each shelf individually. Just make sure whatever conduit channel you picked out has an inside width that fits your strip (standard RGB is 10mm wide; 5-in-1 RGBCCT strips are often 12mm wide).
This is so so so helpful, thank you so much!!!!! A couple follow-up questions immediately (may have more questions once we start)
A cursory search indicates that Zigbee doesn't have native support for Google Home; however, this one appears to. Any controller that is 24V DC, RGBCCT, and supports your cloud platform of choice should work.
Matching colors is nice, but as long as you're using the same standards on either end, I don't know of any explicit standard for something like this. The controller you use will have instructions on how to attach RGBCCT LED's, but it should be pretty straightforward. In fact, the product description page for the linked product has a visual reference.
However you want to do it! I'm just visualizing from afar, whatever you would be happy with is the way to go. Doing each level individually will definitely save you some runs, I just wasn't sure how much space you had between your shelves. You could save yourself even more runs by piggybacking, then you'd only have one wire going to your controller and you could skip the Wago nuts and project box. As mentioned, drawback is no failure redundancy. Also I'd be slightly hesitant to wonder how much running the entire project through one set of wires would cause those wires to heat up -- but it might be fine, I'd have to look more into recommended wire gauges for that voltage/current draw.
Separate reply to ensure you see it:
I plugged the data into a few wire calculators, and read up on piggybacking, and I'm glad I did.
I would not recommend piggybacking. It would require larger gauge wire, and you. Can't piggyback on the strips themselves, which are under rated for the amperage the whole setup would draw. If you wanted to piggyback, you would need to use 12 gauge 6 conductor wire, and do wire taps to the strips.
If you're going the junction box route, you should use 12 gauge wire for your positive feed from the controller to the junction box. You could use 22 gauge for the individual runs out to each shelf, but the way the math works out:
At max output, typical high-output strips draw around 6 watts per foot. Across 70 total feet (7 runs of 10 ft), that’s roughly 420 watts. Over 24VDC is about 17.5 amps. Because RGBCCW strips are common anode, all 17.5 amps flow through that single positive wire. On the return, that load is split across the five negative color channels (R, G, B, CW, WW), meaning each individual channel only sees around 2 to 4 amps at any given time.
That's why your main positive trunk wire needs to be heavy (12 gauge seems to be the safe minimum to avoid voltage drop and heat, according to the online calculators I used), while the individual shelf wires (including the positive wire) from the junction box can safely step down to 22 gauge wire since each 10 ft strip only pulls around 2.5 amps max.
So functionally: 12 gauge wires for both wires going from your power supply to your controller. 12 gauge red wire from your controller to the Wago nut in the junction box. 22 gauge wires for everything else. Hopefully that makes sense?
Sorry for slow reply, I have indeed seen this! We are not piggybacking, and to simplify effort I think we're actually going to spend a bit extra on controllers and do 4 total instead of 2 total, so that we don't have to have more than 4 output channels per controller, and we found a controller that we should be able to configure via Google (there won't be a dedicated light switch for these, itll just be asking google to turn it on and off).. The bookshelves are assembled and we're going to be doing the wiring next week on Tuesday or Wednesday I think. If we have more questions I'll ask, otherwise I'll post pictures here when it's done!
So, this project is mostly complete (in one half of the room, 2nd half will happen later)! You helped us make it happen! There's one problem we're still having:
There's an issue with flickering that seems to only occur when 3 strips are plugged into a controller. I have a video of the flickering that I can share although maybe would need to do that over Discord - if you dm me your discord I can add you (I have global friend requests off) - or could also do email, let me know. But without the video, description of what's going on:
On the top half of the 7 shelves, we have 4 strips plugged into the controller. We've been having zero problems, although we would prefer if we could make them a bit brighter than the current max brightness. Could a different power supply permit that maybe?
The actual problem though is on the bottom, where we have 3 strips plugged into the controller plugged into the PSU. If 2 strips are plugged in, it's fine. If 3 strips are plugged in, the 3rd flickers to no end. We have swapped out both PSU and controller, and it's still happening. We've swapped out wire connecting strip to controller. We've swapped out LED strip. The flashing/flickering still happens no matter what we do. This flickering is what I want to send you a video of so you can see the type of flickering.
Any idea what might be going on?
I have a suspicion, but I'll take a look at your video before I go down the rabbit hole. Here's my Discord profile, although I'm not sure if you have Nitro or not (I don't), and depending on the file size of the video that may or may not work. Hopefully it's not an issue.
And just to confirm my understanding of your setup:
There are 2 bookshelves, each with 7 shelves. The shelves on an individual bookshelf are about 10 ft in length. That's a total of 14 "individual zones", each one being a 10 ft strip. You purchased four of those iWonbrey 12v 150w power supplies, and four of those Elite 6 WLED controllers, with the intention of grouping those 14 individual zones into what I'll refer to as 4 "macro zones" of 4/4/3/3 individual zones. You're going from your controller to some kind of distribution block, at which point you break out to the desired number of individual zones. It's 22g wire to everything, except 12g wire from the power supply to the controller (both leads), and 12g wire from the positive of the controller to the distribution block. And everything works when it's a combined zone of 3, but the flicker is present when it's a combined zone of 4. That sum it up?
So far we've only set up one of the sides, so divide everything by 2, but otherwise this is mostly correct, I'm not sure I understand everything though so it might be entirely correct.
One bookshelf (so far), 7 shelves, roughly 10 feet of LEDs (in the app we have it set to 60 length for each of the strands we're using and that fills it all the way - I'll send you some of these screenshots in Discord also).
And yes right now 2 power supplies, 2 controllers, each pair servicing either a 4 strip zone or a 3 strip zone.