Fencing

Bit of fun...

We usually put up some Christmas lights on the house - some fairy lights on the metal fencing at the front, but a pain as means a cable out of a window. They are usually just normal fairy lights.

But with my new found expertise in WS2812 style LED strips, and my controllers, I decided to do better.

11m of wooden fence at the front of the house on the road. So let's do this properly. The key point is I have outside power at the end of the fence for the hot tub. So I was able to install, under cover, a 20A 5V power supply.

I then got 4 strings of fairy light style water proof 5V WS2812 LEDs.

I drilled nearly 200 holes, carefully measuring each to be level and evenly spaced. That is surprisingly hard work, LOL. James followed me poking LEDs through the holes. We were both expecting to fall off the damn wall, and James's main concern is I would fall off whilst he was not videoing!

But it is not quite so simple. Just in case you don't know, there are two common issues with LED strips.

Current limit

One issue is max current draw can be too much for power supply. To test you can either work it out, or, simply set all LEDs full white. 200 LEDs is too much for a typical small 5V USB charger plug. Hence the 20A 5V supply.

I actually also did 663 (11m) RGBW LEDs on nice 45 degree extruded trunking with diffusers for the hot tub as well, from same supply. Now that used a lot of current - just one 5m strip is too much for a USB 5V charger when white.

Voltage drop

This is slightly harder to solve. Along the strip the current draw means voltage drops as you go along. Different LEDs need different voltages. First you lose some blue making it yellow, and then some green, making red/pink. And even before that, when white still, you lose some brightness.

So with this 50 LED strip - one strip works. Two strips work but losing brightness at end. Three strips means going distinctly yellow at the end. I wanted four strips!

The solution

The solution is power feed in - the strips even have extra tails for power as well as the three wires for power and data. You feed in extra power at each strip end, so for my 4 strips I feed in at 5 points.

But how do you feed in power? In some cases you could simply power your longer strip at both ends and not have enough drop to the middle to notice. But I don't have power at the other end.

But actually it is possible to feed in even with just power from one end. The reason is the resistance of the wires, these are classic Chinesium™thin wire. If you actually have some thick good quality copper wire you can run and extra power lead the whole length and feed in at each strip end. This is what is in the WAGO boxes in the image.

Merry New year!

P.S. my son sells the controllers and stuff, https://hiwtsi.uk/

Update: Measuring resistance on the 50 LED strip power lines showed 1Ω but the leads were 0.1Ω, so 0.9Ω. A similar length of copper wire registered 0.4Ω, so 0.3Ω, so ⅓ of the resistance.

James did a video :-)

Slow month

I spent over two weeks with a rotten cold, which meant doing bugger all.

I hate that, and even though I have recovered from the cold now, I am still a tad stuck in the "doing fuck all" Christmas spirit.

So, yes, sorry, few blog posts.

I have got my Christmas present to myself, a new watch (Matrix Powerwatch 2) which is pretty cool. And that means once again I am watching my steps and calories, which is good news. Whilst it is new and has quirks, it does indeed seem to be a pretty good smart watch that does not need charging (uses body heat and solar). So far it is working well, even with GPS tracking my cycling! OK, 4461 is not a good step count today, I was again being lazy, but I have been managing nearer 12k most days.

Whilst I am hoping to get my head in to bluetooth and such over the next few weeks, I am also looking at some impressive TI ARM processors as well. More to post on all of that later.

Merry New Year and Happy mid-winter festival to all, whatever your reason for taking a few days rest... I'll be opening some virtual presents in WoW Classic, Mirage Raceway realm, tomorrow.

Merry Christmas

Today has been nice. It is perhaps one of the first Christmas's where we have had fewer people than usual. We are at a stage now where a lot of the kids have their own families and some have even moved to Wales and more are expected to this year. So we had only 7 for Christmas dinner, which is definitely low for us. In the past it has been way more, and even local ice hockey players at the table!

So it is strange in some ways, and a quieter Christmas. Needless to say we had several people visit anyway. I suspect next year will be similar, we will see.

Even so, this is the sort of visitors we had :-) Seriously, I googled, No results found for "chocolate orange gun" - this must be a world first!


And lots of presents from the kids, and some friends, thank you all. Lewis had a lovely time here in the Bracknell, and I know Bobby had a great time in Wales. Sandra got loads of Harry Potter stuff which was nice.

I now have a Phaser to go with my Communicator. Impressive. Lewis likes it too :-)

It is actually a TV remote which I have yet to program successfully. As a Phaser it is pretty impressive as it managed to give me an instant migraine. Nearly the only downer on the day for an hour or so. Well, hard to be sure it was the phaser, but not had one for many months until today.

I got many other things too, thanks all.

I also got an electrical muscle stimulation foot device to try to improve circulation, and to help with diabetic peripheral neuropathy. Sounds good, and listed as suitable for diabetics. Thanks to my lovely wife. Looking on the internet it sounds like this may be beneficial and not bullshit. I will see. What is good is you can feel what it is doing, and it is plausible that it could help, so I really hope so.

My real present to myself is actually a work thing, an new Mac for my work from my home office, but sadly the Santra tracker has stopped for now in Germany :-)

Obviously not Santa, and actually UPS. The irony is that if it were not a bank holiday for Christmas I would have got it today, but instead I have to wait for Wednesday. I'll no doubt do a post on that when I have had a chance to play with it.

However, I do have to say how impressed I am with my wife, as always. She puts a lot in the Christmas, even if not so many for Christmas dinner this year. She spends weeks, or months, planning.

She did a lovely dinner, and lovely trifle and desserts.

She really takes everything very seriously and thinks of everyone else, especially at Christmas.

I may have many technical skills, but she excels at what is needed for food and hospitality and presents at Christmas.

Obviously she deserves to wear the tiara all the time :-)

It is a shame when people mess up plans a bit, but she copes.

Of all the daft things to do on Christmas day -  I actually ordered a load of bootlace crimp ferrules and a crimp tool to come this week. I plan to try them out on an alarm system. I hear good things, and I'll post more on that, i.e. whether more or less hassle than not using them. Given how frustrating I found wires and screw terminals last time (even good ones) are, I am thinking these will be good.

I also watched Dr Who, and opened presents in Ironforge, just for fun. I have a quiet week to follow.

Oh, I also dropped the sofa bed on my finger. That is not looking good, and I expect that will be painful for many days. My own bloody fault. Why the electrocution device has such a short lead is beyond me.