Exterior lighting ideas

EL Wire/Tape/Panels, LEDs, pixels and strips, LCDs and TFTs, etc products from Adafruit

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ebeyer
 
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Joined: Tue Mar 15, 2016 3:31 pm

Exterior lighting ideas

Post by ebeyer »

I'm increasingly dissatisfied with my front porch lighting - solar stem lights whose stems like to break, making them look like glowing fallen trees after a hurricane. I need something durable, mostly weather-proof that's easy to set up (relatively) and hard to accidentally destroy (eg., my lawn mower). I was thinking of maybe running neopixel strips down my front walk (~20 feet on either side, so maybe 40-50 feet total?) or 10-12 charliepixel matrix units placed strategically, similar to what I'm doing with the solar lights right now.

The plan would be to route power from a solar battery I have at the front of the house and to set up the lights to either come on at a specific time or to use a light sensor or somesuch.

Has anyone attempted anything like this? What has been your experience? Any advice?

Thanks in advance.

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adafruit_support_bill
 
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Re: Exterior lighting ideas

Post by adafruit_support_bill »

[Moved from Test Messsages -> Glowy Things forum]

The strips have a waterproof sheath, but the ends and any splices will need to be sealed. The other Neopixel products are not waterproof, so you would need to find or make a suitable enclosure. The solar garden lights would make a good housing for a Neopixel ring.

For the solar garden lights, I just throw away the plastic spikes. I cut an 18" length of steel pipe - slightly smaller than the ID of the stems. Drive the pipe into the ground and slip the stem of the solar light over the pipe. No more broken stems.

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