ok, so its all still in the early fase and i knew i could turn to u guys to ask how i would go about making this .. its a 3*4 (meter) room, and i am planning on making a mdf 'border' 1m wide around the ceiling with leds in it everywhere so its like a star sky i calculated i will need around 2000 leds (!) all white but i would also like to use different kinds of brightness .. if that doesent make it needlessly complex.. how would i go about doing this (i dont really feel like soldering all of them ...) and where should i shop for leds ? (i'm in belgium) .. txs for all your help in advance
If you dont want to solder the leds, which if you take the time to set it up right and get a decent work area setup before you start, you could probably finish in a few hours..... Then I would suggest a crimp of some sort, sort of like a butt connector as used in car audio and when I say a few hours, it depends on your experience average joe could prolly do it in 3-4 hours once hes setup everything so he doesnt have to stop, I could prolly do it in 2-3 hours. Theres a few different ways to do it, but soldering is definitely the best way to go, since from what your saying this will be a long term feature in the house, taking the time now could mean saving alot of time and hassle later when some could potentially screw up and you have to take everything apart..........
I would make semi-random grids and use all the same brightness leds. Then wire something up that would dim some part of the ceiling and brighten other parts again in some random order I wouldn't want to solder all of those, so maybe try prewired leds or heat shrinks
If you can get some fiber cable cheaply it should be easy enough to create a few "hubs" of leds and then run the fiber to the hubs through the mdf.
I made a star wall a while back buy getting a lot of fiber optic lamps from the local pound shop. I used thin MDF board 3 or 4 mm i think, drilled lots of small holes pushed the fiber through the hole then hot glue gunned the fiber in place. once i had lots of fiber in place i grabbed random fibres within a foot odd circle then pulled them back to one place taped the firers together and cut with a sharp knife. Then hot glue gunned this to an LED. picking random fibers and sticking them to different leds made it possible to have the "stars" twinkle at differnet times. To make the led wiring eaiser i cheated and used a set of plug in the wall christmas tree lights. In order to make it a little better i swpped out a few of the leds for yellow blue and red leds i had just to make sure it wasn't all one colour.
I agree with the fiber suggestion. That's what they do in jewelry and Swarovski shops - a single light source and many exit points. It will simplify the work, and although it may seem costly at first, a few light sources and fiber will cost far less than 2000 LEDs and the amount of time it would demand. You guys who made something similar.... maybe photos of your work would help and inspire.
Fiber would be good, and you could vary the brightness by how far you have the end of the strand though the hole. I.E all the way though, flush with the surface would be the brightest, and not all the way though would be dimmer... to a point, after a bit it will just only be visible from directly under the hole.
what about if you buy a set of white LED christmas lights theyve got several differend circuits inside 1 set so you can easily add somekind of controller at the end of each set.
