7 Common LED Strip FAILS and How To Avoid Them

today on the hookup i'm going to show you seven of the biggest mistakes that people make when using led strips in their projects and how to avoid them to make your installations look way more professional in my humble opinion the diffuse light provided by led strips looks way better than the harsh point light that you get from a light bulb but while interior decorators have been showing us how to use light bulbs correctly for decades we haven't really figured out this whole led strip thing yet today i'm going to cover seven of the biggest led strip installation pitfalls and how you can avoid them this video is sponsored by holidaycoro.com if you're thinking about setting up a light show for halloween or christmas this year now is the time to start planning and learning and holiday coral is a great resource not only for products but also for instructional material holiday coral offers both individual components and pre-assembled kits so whatever your level of expertise holiday coral has you covered with ac light controllers rgb light controllers lights props and mounts check out holiday coral using the link down in the description to support my channel let's start out with the biggest and most obvious failure that i see exposed led strips led strips are ugly and the leds themselves give off a pretty harsh light when at all possible you should try to mount your strips out of sight and project it towards another surface and while this works great for strips that are behind the tv or under kitchen cabinets sometimes there's nothing to project onto in those instances you should instead install your leds inside of a channel with a diffuser not only do these channels hide the led strips themselves but they're also much easier to mount and keep straight than the bare led strips typically these channels are made out of aluminum which means they're lightweight they won't rust and they can be cut easily with a cheap hacksaw you can get them in unfinished aluminum or black color and they come in different shapes my two favorite versions are the 45 degree angle mounts for use in corners and the standard flat profile for mounting to walls or roof lines here's an easy tip when using these channels that will make your installs look 10 times better lay out all your channels and cut them to length but don't use the cut cover with the cut channel instead offset the seams of your channels and your covers to make the installation look completely straight even when it's not perfect occasionally you'll want to put your led strips in a more organic shape that can't be accomplished with aluminum channels like maybe this curve on the back of my desk for this application you can get these silica gel neon tube covers that do a great job of both diffusing the light and waterproofing while hiding the ugly led strips inside when you order you need to make sure that your led strip is narrow enough to fit inside the channel that you choose and that the direction that you want to bend your led strip is compatible with the tube type meaning any bends in the strip need to be up and down and not left to right the second common problem that i see all the time in led installations is in indirect installations where somebody fails to keep a uniform distance and angle to the surface that they're projecting on this can cause hot spots in the light which can distract from the overall look and feel of the project in my experience these hot spots are usually either caused by turns in the led strip or the adhesive failing which causes the strips to droop down fortunately both of these problems can be solved pretty easily for not very much money i've seen a bunch of tutorials for installing television bias lighting that suggests making a loop in the corner of your tv to avoid bending the strip too much and while it's great advice to avoid bending your led strips a loop in the corner is going to create a hot spot as the number of leds in that area increases and also get closer to the wall a much better option is to buy some solderless led corner connectors all you need to do is match up the number of copper pads on your led strip to the number of pins that are advertised on the listing for instance this tunable white strip has three pins so you would search for a three pin corner connector but this rgbw strip has five copper pads so you'd need to get a five pin corner connector instead to install them all you need to do is cut down the middle of the copper pads on your led strips and then clip them into place using the plastic tabs in addition to corner connectors there's also just wire leads that will allow you to create custom angles or jump a gap like maybe going from one kitchen cabinet to another to prevent the notoriously terrible led strip adhesive from failing and making your project look like a droopy mess i'd highly recommend using mounting clips for a little over 10 cents each these little things can do an infinitely better job holding your strips in place than the standard adhesive and you don't even need to use that many of them just place them in the corners and anywhere that the strip isn't lying completely flat on the surface this will reinforce the adhesive tape that's on the back of the strip and give you a long lasting droop-free installation the third common issue is going to require a little bit of a reality check on your part ask yourself how often you're realistically going to want your led strip to be a color other than white the most common type of led strips are rgb meaning they have three different leds in them red green and blue if you want to make pink you'd turn on the red channel and the blue channel if you want to make yellow you'd turn on red and green and to make white you turn on red green and blue but it doesn't really look white at least not the pure white that we're used to and it ends up looking kind of purple and gross to avoid this you can either buy all white strips or rgbw strips that have a dedicated white channel but be aware that not all rgb strips are made equal and some strips have four colors on a single chip while others have a dedicated white chip and then a separate rgb chip for installations where the leds are going to be visible you should absolutely choose the four in one chips because otherwise you'll never be able to mix the white channel with the color channels but in indirect lighting situations you should use the separate white chip which will be brighter and have better heat dissipation for areas where color isn't needed you should opt for all white strips or if you want to get really fancy tunable white strips can be used that allow for wide customization of the white channel color temperature the fourth issue has to do with the length of your led strips and the brightness that you want to achieve if you're planning on a short run and you're going to keep the brightness relatively low you can get away with almost any voltage but for long runs and higher brightness you're going to want to choose a strip that uses a higher voltage depending on your led strip type you're generally going to see voltages between 5 and 24 and higher voltages will result in more accurate colors throughout the strip and less differences in brightness the further you get away from the power supply because you generally don't find led strips and power supplies sold together you'll need to make sure you get the right power supply for your strip or strips that you want to use thankfully you don't need a degree in electrical engineering to pick the right power supply no matter how many strips you put together the voltage never changes but the wattage and the amperage are going to add up that means if you were going to use three 24 volt 5 amp 120 watt led strips daisy chained together you'd need to buy a 24 volt power supply rated for at least 15 amps and 360 watts it's never a bad thing to go over when it comes to amps and watts but the voltage needs to match exactly along with power consumption comes the fifth issue that i see led density generally speaking the greater the led density the more expensive the strip will be but increased density will also give you better color accuracy diffusion and brightness if you're going to be able to see the strip even through a diffuser increasing the density will noticeably improve the look of the strip the lowest density available is generally 30 leds per meter and they can go all the way up to 144 leds per meter or even more than that like in this crazy white led strip from btf lighting that doesn't have any visible leds just a long continuous tape of tiny white leds that are only distinguishable at very low brightness so why would you choose anything but the highest density well along with density comes power consumption and along with power consumption comes heat and heat is the number one killer of leds the hotter they get the lower their lifespan will be and their brightness will also decrease over time the aluminum channels we discussed earlier do a great job of dissipating heat from your led strip but sometimes mounting your strips to metal isn't an option and in those cases you need to give a conscious thought to how your led strip is going to get rid of that heat in the case of an aluminum channel the heat is transferred through the back of the strip to the large metal enclosure but if you mount your strip to wood which is notoriously bad at transferring heat you'll need to plan for adequate airflow across the top of your leds and that leads me to my next point waterproofing led strips come in three waterproofing types there's ip20 or three zero which basically means no waterproofing at all where the electronics are pretty directly exposed ip65 which covers the top of the strip in a waterproof silicone layer that's sufficient for led strips that will occasionally be splashed or exposed to high humidity and then there's ip67 where the strips are sealed in a silicone sleeve that provides a completely watertight seal in the strip generally speaking as waterproofing increases heat dissipation also decreases so choose wisely and if you don't need waterproofing don't buy it sixth what the heck are individually addressable leds if you've ever seen an led strip where each individual led is doing something different that's an individually addressable led strip on a traditional strip there's a common positive voltage that goes to each led on the strip and then there's a separate control for each color on the strip but the entire strip shares those same controls for the red channel the blue channel and the green channel in an individually addressable strip each led has a tiny microchip that takes instructions meant only for that one led so every led can do something a little bit different i love individually addressable leds and with some knowledge and basic coding they can accomplish things that wouldn't be possible with a traditional or what are sometimes called dumb led strip but out of the box they aren't nearly as user friendly you can buy pre-made bluetooth and wi-fi controllers for individually addressable strips but without a little bit of programming knowledge your options are still going to be really limited and you're going to end up spending more on the strip itself on top of that individually addressable led strips are much more vulnerable to damage and in most addressable led strips a single dead led can cause the rest of the strip to completely stop working my advice on this subject unless you have a specific reason for choosing addressable led strips traditional led strips will be much cheaper and perform better and finally the last mistake that i see people make all the time with their projects is how they control them the most common controllers out there are these small infrared remote controls but if you need to grab a cheap plastic remote anytime you want to turn on your led strip you're probably not going to do it very often and the bluetooth controllers that require you to open up an app on your phone are even less likely to get used a simple solution is to connect the power supply of your strip to a switched outlet or a smart switch in which case your led strips will turn on with the same settings that they had when the power was lost but better control options definitely do exist the shelley rgb w2 for instance connects via wi-fi and gives brightness and color controls via amazon echo or google assistant and it can be tied with a smart home hub to adjust the lighting based on the time of day or tie the led strip to a light switch that it isn't physically connected to the rgb w2 is only for controlling traditional led strips and if you're looking for a pre-built individually addressable led controller i've got some links down in the description but just know that you'll get much more use out of them if you're willing to write a little bit of code or at least wire up a microcontroller yourself and maybe use a program like wled so what do you think did i miss a mistake that you've made let me know down in the comments if you still got questions about led strip type or mounting options go ahead and leave a comment or better yet come join us on the hook up home automation facebook page to get answers not only from me but from thousands of other smart home enthusiasts as always thank you so much to my awesome patrons over at patreon for your continued support on my channel and if you're interested in supporting my channel please check out the links down in the description if you enjoyed this video please hit that thumbs up button and consider subscribing and as always thanks for watching the hookup [Music] you

Channel: The Hook Up

Views: 4,431,213

Rating: 4.8838801 out of 5

Keywords: home assistant, hassio, home automation, hass.io, smart home, diy, electronics, arduino, esp8266, nodemcu, wemos d1, automation, led, installation, tips, tricks, mounting, power, explained, led lights, rgb strips, led strip lights, led light strips, led strip, led strips, how to install led strip lights, led strips in room, led strips installation, led strips ideas, led strips under bed, led strips under cabinet lighting, light strips for desk, led strip connector, led strip diffuser

Id: Fu4qZW0pQm4

Length: 12min 14sec (734 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/lightsuitman]

Meh. Sure, as a formerly-blind-leading-the-blind I guess his advice is better than nothing to start.

Every time I see one of his videos there's something important overlooked or misrepresented that pisses me off. Probably because they're slick enough that beginners will assume he's a real expert from the air of confidence projected. More like a tech head who's made a personal hobby of one-off projects in his own home into a revenue stream.

In trying to dumb down the more technical electrical stuff he sets up many newbies to hold onto their already-unrealistic expectations about run lengths or running any additional or beefier wiring for power injection. Then he actually recommends those terrible solderless connectors. The only people who recommend those are LED sellers and beginners who've used them just enough to be lulled into thinking they have no nasty downside, just pure convenience for people who don't want to solder anything.

The ever-present affiliate kickback links sometimes go to random suppliers I'd consider no more reliable than picking any Amazon suggestion based on the "verified" fake reviews that proliferate there. Sometimes they go to sponsoring dealers who've paid him to review their products on video. His website is a similar tunnel-vision hodgepodge, listing only addressable LED chipsets and styles as offered by his sponsor while ignoring the rest.