Mel,
You're being cool , too, which is one of the best by-products of turning to LEDs for lighting. That's probably at least as great a benefit with LEDs in Bakersfield as it is in Urbana. Makes a huge difference in operator comfort, even with A/C on.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I switched my entire house to LEDs shortly after moving, and there was a noticeable difference in my electric bill - particularly when I replaced the 4x 150 watt floodlights in the back yard with LED equivalents - which COMBINED draw less than 100 watts. They are on frequently because of letting the dogs out.
So no surprise, my plan for lighting the layout is 100% LED. That's another one fo those Arduino projects - a controller for th elighting. The RGB strips I looked at so far come with wimpy controllers that can only do one reel, plus have too gross a step in PWM for smooth transistions between colors. There's no way one controller could do the whole layout - well, with REALLY huge MOSFETS and lots of cooling it could - so my plan is to make something that can easily synchronize multiple controllers from one master. This will not just be 3 lines, for R, G, and B, but also an additional line for a blue set for night time, and 2 for white strips for the daytime (possibly 3 if 2 rows plus the RGB on white aren't enough). At least, that's the plan, so I can do sunrise/sunset as well as day or night. Might just go and put 8 channels on the controller to make it even and handle any eventuality. Or just make the master controller and have it put out DMX protocol so I can just buy commercial drivers.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
I haven't tried the LED lamps yet. But the new fluorescents, the 48 inch skinny tubes with electronic ballasts give much better light than the traditional cool white bulbs. They come marked for color temperature, 6000K to 9300K. Real sunlight is 6300K. And they have enough red in their output to make layout colors look a lot better. I only paid $32 per single tube fixture last year.
David Starr www.newsnorthwoods.blogspot.com
I replaced one of those 1960's three pot overhead fixtures in our kitchen with a 1' X 4' flat LED overhead panel from Home Depot two years ago. The new panel is as close to a skylight as one can get, but I can install it myself and it would cost 1/10th of the price and time.
Home Depot used to sell an 18" square version of the same thing from the same company, but I don't see them on their website for Canada...only the larger version we used in our kitchen. Still, at the time, I purchased four of the square ones and had a pro install them in my new train room partitioned inside our double-wide garage. They are truly amazing and leave a very natural light all over the layout.
I thought we would save a bundle on power, but the wife wanted a two-seater Spaberry jacuzzi.
On wimpy RGB controllers...you aren't supposed to use a single controller only. you use a single controller and amplifiers which they sell. you've got to wire up the led ribbons from separate supplies anyway. It's essentially the same as a DCC base station+boosters. THose amps are for sale on amazon.
Not to poo poo the custom Arduino solution. That's valid and if you like to tinker, even more fun..just for anyone reading along that isn't interested in that.
Went CFL's about 7 years or more ago and they were cheap as they were supsuidised by the power co., like 25cents as bulb at times. Leds's got reasonable about a years or two ago, now they are downright cheap at as little as $1 a peice but in the time since they became common, the power consumption went down too as they used to take about as much power as a CFL (which is 1/4 or less of incandesent) to almost 1/2 the power of a CFL. Best part is that both use my old track lighting system (which was very cheap), you just screw them in.
I have the 4', two bulb fluorescent lights. Can I just change the tubes to LED, or do I need to install new fixtures ?
Mike.
My You Tube
There are two types of LED tube replacements, ones that keep the existing ballast and thus just screw in in place of the old flourescent tube, and ones where you need to rewire the fixture to remove the ballasts. The latter are better, even if they are a little more work. The ballasts are ineffecient (even the newer electronic ones aren't awesome) and just something to fail which will require opening up the fixture anyway.
The easiest way is probbaly to replace the whole fixture, then you are only swapping the power wires feeding in to it.
[quote user="RR_Mel"]with the super high cost for power in California.Why is that?
Russell
[quote user="csxns"]
RR_Melwith the super high cost for power in California.Why is that?
You think power is high in California, I remember moving here from Maryland and noticed an instant drop in price, but that was 30 years ago. On another subject, the stob effect you get may be do to the feedback line to the power pole not being connected properly, had that problem on the old place.