# LED Spot Lights



## joepolicy (Sep 19, 2008)

Great tutorial! All of my Halloween RGB lights are from Seasonal Entertainment - floods, wall washers and spots. Greg offers very good support but he does get pretty busy close to Christmas - I keep hinting to him that he needs to market more to the Halloween crowd!

I use their Rainbow Brain for full DMX control of my "Rainbow" line of lights with VSA - but the Brain will work with any LED (single color or RGB) lights to include mini spots. I have been using PVC to house my spots, your method looks much better and much much cleaner! I will definitely have to "upgrade" my spots this year!

Thanks,

Joe


----------



## agentbud (Oct 29, 2008)

Thanks Joe. I started off trying to use PVC but couldn't find an easy and economical way to create a water tight lens cover. I'd like to see how you did yours if you have any pictures.

Mike


----------



## Cray Augsburg (May 8, 2010)

Hey guys. I purchased 12 of the round spots a few weeks ago for use with my LOR system. My plan is to use PVC to house them. Been working on a prototype (unfortunately not yet finished). Uses a 2" cap on the back, connected to a 2" coupler by a short length of 2" pipe. The lens is inside the back end of the coupler, with the pipe pushed up against it. Sealed with PVC glue from inside and a ring of silicone on the front. The lens is some old 1/4" acrylic I had sitting around. Cut it to rough shape then "ground" it to final with a belt sander. The Rainbow Spot is held against the lens with a "split ring" cut from 2" pipe pressing it from behind. The pigtail exits the rear of the cap through a watertight cord grip. I won't be daisy-chaining so only needed one exit. The final step (Yeah, right!) will be to add a u-bar so it can be hung from a lighting grid.

Man, after typing all that, it sure sounds like Mike's approach would be a lot easier! I don't have a lot in materials, but the cost is way up there in terms of time. Looks really good, Mike. I, too, would like to see what Joe has done with teh PVC approach. And as I get mine a little more done, I'll upload some pics.


----------



## Jaybo (Oct 18, 2008)

I'm doing something very similar, but using the waterproof RGB 5050 SMD lights and small DMX controllers from www.cheapdmx.com and www.holidaycoro.com.



















I will be mounting the entire setup inside a Workforce Portable 250 Watt worklight from HomeDepot. The light comes with a base, clamp, and stake attachments.










Right now I am playing with Vixen and Freestyler to control the lights, but will probably purchase VSA so I can have triggers and control servos.


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

I went to the website to try and see if the led's are common anode or common cathode and I didn't see where it specified or if it gave you a choice during the purchase process. Anybody know?


----------



## Jaybo (Oct 18, 2008)

buckaneerdude said:


> I went to the website to try and see if the led's are common anode or common cathode and I didn't see where it specified or if it gave you a choice during the purchase process. Anybody know?


The Rainbow floods and spots, plus the 5050 SMD LED modules above are all common anode. 

The pdf that describes how to attach the pigtail connectors to the Rainbow Floods states that all Rainbow lights are common anode. You can tell in the picture of the 5050 LED that it is common anode.


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

Hmmm, with common anode, I could control these lights with a Medusa DMX board. I may have to pick up a few of these. Thanks for taking the time to read through the instructions. I just glanced through looking more for something along the line of specifications.


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

> These instructions assume you have purchased and assembled the round 2” LED spot lights


For one who is a novice at soldering, how difficult is the 2" LED kit to put together? I assume it is clear as to where to solder the pig tail wires?


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

By the way, I love this design!


----------



## coasterbp (Aug 25, 2009)

I have purchased and assembled 1o of the Rainbow Floods myself. Very easy to solder and directions are CRYSTAL clear. Plus, Greg, the owner, is super helpful should you run into any issues.

-=CoasterBP


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

> I will be mounting the entire setup inside a Workforce Portable 250 Watt worklight from HomeDepot. The light comes with a base, clamp, and stake attachments.


Jaybo, can you provide more detail as to how you plan to wire/mount this setup? Thx


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

coasterbp said:


> I have purchased and assembled 1o of the Rainbow Floods myself. Very easy to solder and directions are CRYSTAL clear. Plus, Greg, the owner, is super helpful should you run into any issues.
> 
> -=CoasterBP


Thx Coaster…


----------



## Cray Augsburg (May 8, 2010)

SavageEye said:


> For one who is a novice at soldering, how difficult is the 2" LED kit to put together? I assume it is clear as to where to solder the pig tail wires?


With a 25-watt pencil-tip iron and very fine solder, the board is pretty easy to solder up. The pads are smallish (have to be), but the varnish keeps the solder where it should be.

All component locations and connections (ie, pigtail) are very clearly marked. And the instructions online at Seasonal Entertainment are really pretty good.

Hope this helps.


----------



## agentbud (Oct 29, 2008)

coasterbp said:


> I have purchased and assembled 1o of the Rainbow Floods myself. Very easy to solder and directions are CRYSTAL clear. Plus, Greg, the owner, is super helpful should you run into any issues.
> 
> -=CoasterBP


I agree. They are pretty easy to assemble with basic soldering skills. However, if you don't feel comfortable doing it Greg sells them already assembled too.
Mike


----------



## Hooked_on_Scares (Apr 16, 2009)

buckaneerdude & others,

I sent an email to Greg regarding the current consumption, and these will work with the Medusa DMX board. The LEDs are wired in parallel, resulting in ~200-240mA consumption per color. So, this is beyond the 150mA per LED output I normally spec when you're using multiple outputs. But keep the sum of the remaining LED outputs below 500mA, and don't run the board inside an oven, and you should be okay.

- Hook


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

I got one of the lights today and assembled it. The assembly instructions don't specify which wires get the 12vdc power. I would guess it is connected to red green blue and the black wire connected to ground but, as I'm going to experiment with this on a Medusa board, I went to the Medusa manual. The Medusa manual shows a line from power, to resistor, to anode on LED then cathode from LED to Medusa. How should one of these lights be connected to the Medusa?


----------



## Jaybo (Oct 18, 2008)

SavageEye said:


> Jaybo, can you provide more detail as to how you plan to wire/mount this setup? Thx


Sorry, I just now saw your post. I don't want to pull this thread off topic, so I will post a new thread sometime this weekend. I finished my first light just last week, so if there is time I will document the build of my next light.


----------



## Hooked_on_Scares (Apr 16, 2009)

Hi b'dude,

As long as you don't connect the + of the supply directly to the Medusa outputs, you should be fine. You said these were common anode, right? So, my guess would be that the black wire is actually the +, and each colored wire would be that color LED's -. Regarding the resistors, you shouldn't need to add external resistors, because that LED model already has them installed (it does, right?).

Try this. Connect the black up to the + of your supply, and red, green, and blue wires to the - of your supply. Are you blind now? As long as that worked, you should be able to hook up to the Medusa. Keep the black wire connected to the + of your supply, and connect the colored wires to the Medusa LED outputs. Finally, connect the - of your supply to one of the ground connections on the Medusa board. Then you should be all set!

- Hook


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

Ok, thanks! It works really well. The light is actually very bright and I can control it easily with it connected to the Medusa board.


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

Well I finally took a few minutes to show one of the Seasonal Entertainment diy LED kits all set up and working in VSA.

Here is a pic of the contents of the kit:










Here's a pic of the PCB with the resistors and LEDs soldered on:










Here's a pic of how it's connected to the Medusa (thanks Hook for the tip to get it to work):










And here's a video showing VSA running the Medusa DMX board and controlling the light which was mounted inside of a $10 malibu light from HomeDepot. The VSA program includes pulse signals showing how you can strobe the light and turn it on and off and then linear signals showing gradual brightness and dimming.


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

Buckaneerdude, Are you using cat 5 cable between lights? It looks like you heat shrinked something to your white connectors, just wonder what it is. Thx.


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

Since I'm not putting multiple lights on a chain, I connected one of the white connectors to the light and the other to the Medusa. The wire to the light has been soldered to a 4 conductor wire giving about a 4' length from the light to the connector. Yes I did use shrink tubing over the soldered joints for each color of wire and then put another shrink tube over the 4 wires. I could have used CAT5 but I used this instead because it had 4 colored wires in it, red, green, black and a greyish color.


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

buckaneerdude said:


> Since I'm not putting multiple lights on a chain, I connected one of the white connectors to the light and the other to the Medusa. The wire to the light has been soldered to a 4 conductor wire giving about a 4' length from the light to the connector. Yes I did use shrink tubing over the soldered joints for each color of wire and then put another shrink tube over the 4 wires. I could have used CAT5 but I used this instead because it had 4 colored wires in it, red, green, black and a greyish color.


If you were to daisy chain them, what would you use as your run between lights? Lamp wire? Cat 5? How many do you think you could connect in a run? Thx.


----------



## agentbud (Oct 29, 2008)

Savage,

Cat5 would work fine. Personally I am using the same waterproof-connector wire as the pigtails. But it is kinda expensive so I am running Cat5 from my DC controller out to the yard and then using an adapter to convert the Cat5 to the 4-pin waterproof wire which I then run inbetween all the lights. The number you can run together should depend on the capacity of your controller card. Check the amp capacity of your DC board. The Spot lights from seasonalentertainment draw .64 amps each when on at 100%. Hope that helps.
Mike


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

It would be easy enough to do it all with just CAT5 wire and connectors. I pretty much always recommend using stranded CAT5 because it is much more flexible and will easily lay flat on the ground. Typical CAT5 wants to curl like a spring and is more of a tripping hazard and more difficult to hide. 

I am controlling these lights using a Medusa DMX board and daisy chaining two or more would exceed the recommended capacity of the board. The prop I'm using it on is a skeleton that rises up in a coffin, turns and then talks to the audience. His skull is a 3axis GYS rack and pinion design and he also has tri-color LEDs in his eyes. The Medusa DMX board will allow me to control the movement of the servos in the skull, the mix and brightness of the eye colors as well as the color mix and brightness of this light. This light will be positioned inside of the coffin, aiming up from a low position. Lighting from below gives you that creepy look on faces and being able to control the brightness and color will be an added plus.


----------



## Hooked_on_Scares (Apr 16, 2009)

bdude,

Hypothetically, you could daisy-chain more lights (e.g.: instead of 1 @ 12V, put two in series at 24V). The Medusa outputs can tolerate up to 50V. What you can't do is wire up multiple in parallel, and then connect the multiple wires to a given Medusa output.

However, I think the structure of the LED board will prevent you from doing even the daisy-chain. Because the R, G, B on the LED kit board all share the one common wire, you can't wire more than one LED kit board in series. To do that, you'd need to have access to both the + and - of each color, rather than a shared +.

- Hook


----------



## agentbud (Oct 29, 2008)

Here is my setup and what I "believe" I can run on it. I have the CMB-16D-QC DC controller from Light-O-Rama. It has 16 channels divided into 2 banks of 8. Each bank is rated up to 20 Amps. I currently have 4 connections to the board, two to each bank. My power supply to the board is 12V @ 18 amps. So at .64 amps per light I should be able to daisey chain 28 LED spots per bank (18/.64) for a total of 56 lights on the board. Someone please correct me if this is wrong (not that I would need 56). I had 10 of them hooked up and running through VSA the other night, running colors of purple and green and orange and boy did it light up my living room - very cool. These will be used to light up tombstones and other yard props where I normally would have used regular spots.
Mike


----------



## SavageEye (Aug 30, 2010)

Help me understand "parallel" vs. "series" and how to wire each using this setup. Ideally, I would like to use one power source to power about 10 of these lights (daisy chained). 

I made some PVC LED Spots last year (look in my album) and could only daisy chain two together before the third light would not get power. I assume that it had something to do with parallel vs. series and my inexperience in this area. 

I really like what is being presented in this thread and want to move in this direction b/c of the "water resistance" of the Malibu casing and RGB potential.

Thanks.


----------



## agentbud (Oct 29, 2008)

Here is some additional info on how I have mine done. On the DC controller you will need 3 channels for the wires, one channel each for the red, green and blue. There are two ways to wire the lights. If you are using the 4-wire waterproof wires (or any 4-wire cabling) throughout then you connect one of the 4-wire pigtails to the board as shown in the picture below:

View attachment 18166


The LED spots can then be connected in a daisy chain. Since each spot light has two connectors coming out the back just connect the wire from the controller board to one of them and then another wire to the other one that goes out to the next light in the chain, and so on down the line until you max out the allowable amps for those channels (or that bank of channels).
Since the waterproof wire is pricey, I chose to connect Cat5 cable to my controller board, run the Cat5 the 50 or so feet from the board out to the yard and then convert it from Cat5 to the waterproof cabling for the light-to-light daisy chain. To connect Cat5 to the controller board I still use only three of the channels but you use 6 of the 8 wires. See the two pics below for the proper wiring (this is assuming your Cat5 connections are crimped using the 568-B standard).

View attachment 18162


View attachment 18163


Below are some pics of my setup. This first pic shows my controller. I have four Cat5 cables connected, one each to channels 1-3, 4-6, 11-13 and 14-16. Channels 1-3 and 4-6 are in one bank and channels 11-13 and 14-16 are in the other bank. Each bank can support up to 20 amps depending on your power source. 

View attachment 18164


View attachment 18168


These Cat5 cables are only about 3 feet long but I use in-line couplers and longer runs of Cat5 to reach out to the yard. 
Out in the yard I plug the Cat5 into the adapter that converts the Cat5 to 4-wire waterproof cables. 

View attachment 18161


Then I simply connect additional lights in the chain. 

View attachment 18165


One thing to keep in mind about daisy chaining is that all lights that are together in one chain will be the same color since they all terminate back to the same three channels. This is why I opted to have 4 connections into the board so I can have up to 4 different color schemes running at once. And I didn’t even use all of the channels. You could also make a 5th connection to the board using three of the remaining channels 7-10. 

This last pic consists of some of the original spots from Seasonal Entertainment that were rectangular before Greg changed them to round. I daisy chained three together inside a plastic florescent bulb tube and have caps for the ends. These original lights used Cat5 connectors instead of the 4-wire waterproof cabling that the round spots use so I have one of my Cat5 cables coming from the controller board that I leave as Cat5 (instead of adapting to the waterproof wiring) so that I can plug up this tube light.

View attachment 18167


----------



## buckaneerdude (Sep 12, 2008)

I put one of the Seasonal Entertainment lights I got into a different HomeDepot malibu light fixture. The one that AgentBud used is $10 in our HomeDepot and I used it for the first light I made. The second light I made I did with a $5 malibu light from HomeDepot. This one is made of plastic and it has a diffusing lens which works a little better at spreading the light more evenly. This makes more of a flood light than a spot. I really didn't have to do much in the way of hacking. I just removed the bulb socked from the reflector and placed a 1" thick piece of soft foam padding behind the PCB. The wire from the PCB ran through the foam and through the reflector and down through the existing holes for wire. The light lens presses the PCB back into the reflector and latches into place.


----------

