How to Install LED Strip Lights

foreign hi my name is Brent from flexfire LEDs and I'm going to be showing and demonstrating today a full installation of one of our LED strip lights now LED strip lights are a flexible circuit board populated with different types of LEDs if you haven't used these before they come in a variety of brightnesses from subtle accents to task lighting they're flexible versatile customizable and the best thing they are fully controllable so before purchasing any LEDs you really want to understand what your project entails what colors you want it to have what functionality you want to have right so just get a really good clear idea of what your end vision is going to be you want to make sure that you have all the components you need before you start the installation and so typically we like to start at the lights and work backwards all the way through where it's going to be attached where the power supply is going to be hidden and how the things are going to be controlled LED strip lights come with a variety of outputs these outputs are static white tunable white RG be RGB plus white and RGB plus tunable White if you're still deciding which strip that you want and what is going to achieve the best results for your project or still between a couple different options you're really not too sure what to go with go ahead and contact us for this video we're going to be installing an RGB plus tunable white LED strip light I'm going to go over the components you're going to need for this installation the first thing you're going to need is an LED strip light itself each of our strips have a strong 3M Adhesive backing you're also going to notice is every few inches or so there are cut marks on the solder pads you can see a very thin line here and those lines are going to be used to cut the strip light to length all of our strips come with pre-soldered wire leads and so if you're planning on cutting the strip you are going to need additional wire to attach the power and to attach the controlling mechanism for the different colors if you do plan to cut your strip if you are going to be using different segments of your strip or you have some leftover you want to use later there's two ways to attach the wires to it the first way is through soldering we always recommend soldering but sometimes in the field that can be a little bit difficult the other way is to use solderless connectors the next consideration you really have to think about is how you want to control your lights when you're thinking about the controllers you want to really think about how do I want to install this do I want to control it when I walk into my room from a light switch do I want to yell out to Alexa and have her turn my lights on for me when I walk into the house do I want automations do I want this from my smartphone or do I want a handheld remote that I can control from my couch so for this installation we are going to be using our Leona smart home controller and so with the Leona system you're able to also connect to a manual controller you're able to use it from your smartphone with our app you're also able to connect it to a different series of wall panels sensors such as occupancy sensors plugs smart outlets and more if you want to know more about our Leona system go ahead and check out this link so next we're going to need an AC to DC power supply for this specific installation we are using one of the three types of power supplies that we have we're using what's called a plug-in power supply now plug-in power supply has a plug so this could be plugged into any AC outlet here you have the DC output so what the power supply is going to do is take AC and convert it into DC the next thing you're going to need this is optional but we highly recommend it is an aluminum channel and so an aluminum channel makes the installation a lot easier there are different mounting brackets you can use on the back to have a seamless installation they also provide the LED light with a little bit of diffusion so as you can see this one has a frosted cover they also come with clear covers as well our LEDs have been designed to dissipate heat really well however if you wanted to add an additional heatsink it'll draw that additional heat away from it right and so that will extend the life of the LED strip lights as well and so the next thing that we also have for this setup are just some basic tools you need a tape measure you need some pliers um wire strippers scissors as well as a small screwdriver and so now we are ready to install our strip lights make sure all of your components are are working so if you guys do the full mock insulation and something is wrong or you didn't order what you wanted go ahead and contact us go ahead and return it we can send you out what you do need for your project first thing you want to do is turn off to the power of the home especially if you're using a hardwired power supply take the strip and roll it completely out from end to end inspect it for any defects this is what you want to do with any product in general including your controllers including your power supplies and connectors one thing that I'll point out here is on the on the LED strip light itself on the solder pads there are little markings here these markings show you what color is associated with that line so as You Follow that all the way down at the end of the strip you will notice that there is a wire Associated to every one of those colors right so on here if you would look at the 24 volt DC that goes to Black so as you're installing this into the controller this black wire would go to the positive or the power in R would go to Red Green would go to green how this setup would look is you have your power supply from the power supply plug this directly into the controller so on this side of the controller you're going to notice there's a bunch of different letters here so these are for the different output types so the last one here you see there's five different types there's the cool white warm white blue green red so those are the indicators for the RGB Dynamic white strip light and so what you're going to do is find the color that is you know always start from the strip light start from the indicators on the solder pad and then you would go through and say okay well this color is red this color is green and put it to the associated one so here is everything set up as you can see the wires the wires have been stripped we typically strip them about a quarter inch you twist them to be able to give enough conductivity into there right and so you're going to want to test the controllers for functionality you're going to want to go through all of the colors because if you just turn it on and say well yeah it's working I'm going to go install it now if you then go to Red and it turns blue that could mean that you have a wire cross somewhere in there so you can also use and test the app so we've already set the app up we have another video showing how to install the Leona system but within this specific app you're going to want to try all the different color temperatures you're going to want to try the saturation you're going to want to try the brightness and then you're also going to want to try here under White and this is a Warm White and then you can change it all the way to a cool White um with this specific app as well you can set timers and modes and automations and things that run you can connect it to Alexa and all that stuff so that's another topic but you really want to walk through the whole app to make sure before you cut this before you peel it before you install it make sure you like it make sure it's the perfect strip for your project so now if you are going to be cutting your LED strip light you really want to First Look at the installation manual to understand where you need to cut it specifically if you're going to be using solderless connectors the indicator says cut directly down the line here you want to make sure that the power supply is disconnected it's disconnected from the controller just in case there's any residual power within the within the strip light double check the length you know obviously in your space you want to measure it twice you want to measure the strip twice and let's say on this strip if you wanted to have let's say I don't know 14 inches right you would select 14 inches here the closest solder pad to 14 inches and so what that would mean is you would go down here to 12 and cut it here and then you would probably if you needed 14 inches of light with this light you would probably maneuver it somewhere in the middle right because you also have space here for the connector we're going to go ahead and cut directly down the middle and now we have our own piece here so every half meter or so you'll also notice these little beads you don't want to cut on one of these you want to go to the next one the next thing that we're going to be doing is installing a solderless connector on the solder pads there are associated markings for specific colors so as I grab one of these solderless connectors here you can attach it to this side or you can attach it to this side always start at the LED strip light and then assign the color so for this specific example if I were to install it like this DC in would be black blue would be blue red would be red so this would match however if I installed it to this side of the strip Warm White is now black green is now white red is now blue right so it doesn't matter if the wire colors match up to the strip it matters at the strips Channel goes through whatever wire to the controller you'll notice again there's teeth on the inside of this thing so you want the solder pad to rest on the teeth now we use a premium tape a really thick tape that helps with heat dissipation so you can't just put the strip inside you're going to have to peel not only the tape cover but you're going to peel the tape as well back about half an inch so just use your fingernail then you have a bare piece of copper here you see the copper leads on the back and you're going to feed this into the strip light until it hits the back and it's sitting on top of those copper pads and then you're going to use pliers to push this down and so when you push it down you should hear you may or may not but you should hear a click as this clicks into place all right so we have completed the installation strip light has been cut we put on the start of a script connector we've wired that back here and again double check followed that back we assigned the right ones and it's now working and so what I'm going to do again is go over all of the different modes all the different colors to make sure okay is this installed correctly right because the next step we're going to be taking this and installing it into its final location the next thing that we're going to do is once this is all ready to be set up um you're going to run the wire up to where the controller is going to be make sure that everything has space and everything's going to work and then what you're going to do is here on the strip light you're going to take the backing of the adhesive and typically I like to pull off you know maybe about an inch or two and start doing it an inch or two at a time making sure as it sticks to the surface the surface is non-porous it's clean what we're also going to do is I'm going to show you how to install into an aluminum channel so if you're using an aluminum channel I'm going to take the cover off what you would do is start at the very end now the connector can fit inside of the channel and so you're going to peel that a little bit and then put it right in the middle of the channel right you're going to push it into the channel right into the middle if it's not a hundred percent straight you know that's okay because of the depth of if you have a deeper Channel like this one you're not going to be able to to see that it's a little bit crooked this type of cover is the Frosted cover and so what you're going to do is just pop that on and you're going to press that as it goes all the way down the channel if it presses into these little grooves on the side and so you're going to start on one end and press it all the way through now you have the strip light within the channel and you can see as things change right all right congratulations the lights should work they should turn on um if you've installed these things correctly everything should work if they do not work if you have a color missing if you have the brightness isn't working or something is is amiss right if one section is red and the other one's blue you probably have some wires crossed we are here to help you at every step of the way of that and so if you have any questions on pre-installation design selecting the right components or just getting some ideas we can absolutely help you out with that we have real people here chat with us email us and call us please another thing I wanted to mention is in the comments or sorry in the description below you're able to see our project lookbooks our catalogs because there are hundreds of uses of LED strip lights and we have a product for almost all of them so thank you very much and we'll see you in the next videos [Music]

Channel: Flexfire LEDs

Views: 132,680

Keywords: LED, Flexfire LEDs, LED Lighting, LED strip lights, LED strip lights installation, LED strip installation, LED strip lights tutorial

Id: NCQ6g7fcPRs

Length: 13min 10sec (790 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 03 2022