Make a highlight to the interior and organize the lighting of the room with the help of LED tape. You can install the LED ribbon both in a residential room, and in any room and in a restaurant, cafe and even garage. With installation, you will handle yourself, so feel free to go to the store to purchase everything you need.
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Select LED Ribbon
First you need to understand what is this lighting device. It is unusual to many, large lamp, which is enough to simply install and connect to an existing power grid. The LED tape consists of small light bulbs of one or different shades located on a thin tape. LEDs (as well as resistors that affect) are located at a certain distance from each other. The standard ribbon width is 1 cm, and the thickness is only 3 mm.
Most often, in everyday life, electricians call this miniature lighting device as "Duralight" or "Duralight" tape. Because the tape is wound on the coil and sold ready-made segments, 5 m long.
A huge selection of LED tape makes the buyer think about what tape is best to purchase to cope with the connection on your own.
Consider popular types of tapes:
- With moisture protection. Such a tape with a multitude of small light bulbs can be installed in the lighting places where there is an increased humidity. For example, in the kitchen, in the bathroom, in unheated rooms.
- On a sticky basis - no need to make a lot of effort to perform the installation of LED tape in hard-to-reach places or where it is impossible to drill holes for fastening. For example, such a tape on a sticky base is suitable for mounting in a closet or in a storage room.
- Monochrome and multicolored. The standard color of the light bulbs is white, but you can buy a tape with red, blue, green and yellow light bulbs. You can buy a monochrome coil of duralite or choose a tape with multi-colored lamps that are connected sequentially. This option is much more interesting, since with the help of a special block - controller, you can control the sequence of including each color.
Why should you stop your choice on LED ribbon? This inconspicuous lighting device often remainsless, because buyers do not know what the advantages of this product.
Advantages of LED Tape:
- a little power, which means that the economical spending of electricity - it turns out that you can organize beautiful lighting in the room and at the same time save your budget;
- a long service life allows not to think about an alternative light source. Will serve a device from 5 to 12 years;
- due to the fact that the light bulbs are located on a flexible basis, you can give a tape desired shape with soft outlines and install the LED tape in any, even most difficult to reach;
- the buyer has a great opportunity to save a family budget and acquire exactly so many ribbons as necessary. The seller will renounce you the ribbon of the desired length (the cutting of the cut is 6-10 cm, that is, every 3 or 5 light bulbs);
- excellent efficiency. If we compare the work of the LED tape with conventional incandescent lamps, it can be concluded that 70% of heat, given to the lighting device goes to heating the room, but not to lighting. And the LED tape just does not distinguish heat, but the electricity consumption is spent only on the organization of lighting;
- light bulbs do not flicker, which means they do not spoil their eyesight;
- do not study ultraviolet;
- withstand voltage drops on the network;
- operate at low pressure, since additional power supplies are used during installation;
- the ability to choose any shade of the tape and the color of the light bulbs;
- meet environmental standards and fire safety;
- over the years, the quality of the light bulbs does not change;
- you can independently install the tape independently, especially if you use a tape on a sticky basis. Or show a mixture and not drill in the wall of the hole and do not litter in the room where the repair has already been made, you can stick to the opposite direction a strong bilateral scotch and "plant" light bulbs in the right place;
- the manufacturer gives a guarantee on its product, which cannot be said about other lighting devices (incandescent lamps and luminescent).
The flaws at the tape is only 2: it is insufficient brightness, if you compare the glow of LED lamps with conventional lamps and low color rendering. That is, items with the tape are turned on will not be so bright as with sunlight. Moreover, the multicolor tape often "leaves" into one of the colors when installing white light bulbs (glow blue, green or yellow tint).
Illumination of the room with LED ribbon. Photo:
Installing LED ribbons with your own hands
Let's start with the fact that we learn about the most important ruler of the ribbon installation - it is impossible to directly connect light bulbs to the standard power grid. The tape is not designed for high voltage and can burn. Such a source of light can only function from a minimum voltage of 12 or 23 W, and it is necessary to connect the ribbon only through a special device - the power supply. The device works as follows: it lowers the input voltage (standard 220 W) to the required level and protects the LED bulbs from voltage drops. It is very important to purchase not only the LED tape, but also choose the power supply in the correctness, paying the attention of the power of the device. Calculation of power can be calculated independently, knowing the number of light bulbs on the tape, plus a small supply of 20%. As a rule, in large stores of lighting equipment, consultants offer customers to immediately purchase a set of LED tape with a block.
If you buy a tape on your own, trying to save money, then you need to follow these rules:
- Decide on the tape length.
- Pick up the power supply.
- Perform the installation of the tape.
- Connect the ribbon to the power supply and check your work.
When buying a LED tape, you must pay attention to the quality of contact and wires. As a rule, most of the goods come to us from China, so the quality leaves much to be desired, but the price is quite suitable. Carefully look at the tape, if you see that contacts in the place of the wires of wires are bare, then the wire can easily break away during operation or installation and even closer. Next, pay attention to the length of the wiring (green, red, blue, yellow). If they are short, it will also make it difficult to install and will not give warranties for long-term operation. From such a tape it is better to immediately refuse or if you bought a cat in the bag (order via the online store), then you can try to correct the situation. To do this, with the help of the soldering iron, we need to remove short wiring and purchase a colored wire. In order not to get confused in the correctness of the connection of the bulbs of different colors (the color of the wire is and there is a light bulb color), you need to adhere to exactly the same scheme: soldering the long wire of the desired color, identical to the color of the LED crystals.
Buy a flexible stranded wire (section 0.75 mm). From the end of the wire you need to remove the insulating material (up to 0.5 mm), and on the other hand - 1 cm. Then you will also need tips to close the bare wire.
In order not to get confused and buy tips of the desired size, you need to pay attention to the packaging, the marking numbers and indicate the size of the section. In our case, it is 0.75 mm.
We do not stop at this and then look for (at the familiar electrician) or buy a special tool in the store to "plant" tips on the wire. The price of such a tool exceeds the total cost of the LED tape complete, so if you are in the future you will not use such a tool, it is better to rent it.
Insert the crimp is very simple, enter the naked wire into the hole of the tip and then press the special tool. No need to try to make this part of the work with passatsia or teeth. You can't do anything, you can not even try!
Now the wires need to be soldered to the ribbon. Here, too, it is important to become familiar with the nuances of the work: if you use a conventional soldering iron, the heat can be spoiled by the adjacent LEDs, so you need to take a low-power soldering iron (25 watts), and also to get the solder and rosin. Before you start soldering, the wires need to tin (dipped in rosin). If you did everything correctly, you can admire the result of the work done:
For reliability, soldering are wrapped with a tape.
If this preparatory work seemed too long and difficult for you, it is possible to purchase a LED tape in the kit and immediately proceed to the installation.
Installation of LED tape on the ceiling
Most often, the lighting device is installed on the ceiling and is located in a special profile for LED tape. This is an aluminum profile with a transparent diffuser of different plastic form. A profile is used to organize lighting not only ceilings, as well as showcases, shelves, kitchen niches and cabinets.
If you need to install a tape on the ceiling, then a special place is given to it - in niche (for example, from drywall). It is necessary to prepare a place in advance in order to carry out the installation of the LED tape.
When connecting the LED tape, you must decide where "input", and where "output" and connect the wires correctly. "Exit", this is a place to connect the tape. Plus, it is still necessary to immediately select the place where the power supply will be located.
If there is no possibility to install a profile on the ceiling so as not to drill the wall, then you can purchase a tape with sticky layer and glue it directly to a niche, pre-release from the protective shell. It is only necessary to prepare the surface in advance - to wipe the place to the disinfecting agent to get rid of dust and garbage.
Burning the tape is extremely undesirable, permissible bend radius - up to 20 mm. If you need to cut the ribbon, it can be made by conventional sharp scissors, and then connect the tape to the power supply in parallel, observing the polarity. That is, the wires with the "+" sign are connected to the plus, with the sign "-", to minus. So you do not confuse anything and spoil the tape.
How to connect a LED ribbon
You can cut the tape every 3 diode, so, depending on the density of the tape, you can cut every 5 or 10 cm. It is not possible to make a mistake, since on each tape there is a designation. If something is done not so, then you can lose only 3 light bulbs, the rest of the tape will work. Cut the LEDs with conventional scissors.
To connect 2 segments of the ribbon among themselves, it is necessary to follow the sequence. But then at the connection site, the quality of lighting can be reduced, the lamps will not shine so bright as neighboring. Therefore, a parallel connection will be the best option for connecting segments. To do this, prepare a wire with a cross section from 1 mm and adhere to such a scheme:
How to connect an LED tape
The principle of connecting the tape is somewhat different. If you are installed on the installation of a single-color tape, you can only do the power to the power supply, and in order to install a LED tape with multi-colored light bulbs (RGB), an additional installation of the controller is required.
How to make a tape connection:
- wires must be connected to the controller so that the color of the wire coincides with the color of the tag on the device;
- for the red color, the designation is set in the form of the letter "R", for the green "G" and for the blue "b";
- to connect the Black Wire, select a terminal on the device with an inscription 12 or 24V;
- now you can collect the tape, check the assembly correctness and connect to the network to check. If everything works, then you can start the installation of the ribbon, only you first need to disconnect the wiring from the controller.
After the tape is installed at a permanent place, you need to connect the wires again and check the result of the work. If everything is in order, on this work on the installation of LED ribbons are completed with their own hands.
Installing LED tape. Video:
