# How do you power your led lights?



## runeNvash (Aug 8, 2012)

im looking for advice on how everyone powers their led lights in the graveyard. we have our lights connected to a cord using these clip things like this 








but they are kind of expensive and come apart if you mess with it to much. im just wanting to know if there is a cheaper way to do it or if anyone knows of where i can go to get the best price for them.


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## Offwhiteknight (Sep 17, 2008)

I have all my LEDs hooked up with speaker wire. I think 18-2 gauge? Individual "offshoots" for each LED spot is connected to the main wire with wire nuts and electrical tape.

Might not be more stable, but probably a whole lot cheaper.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Most of my LED's are battery powered and/or fairly close to the source. I use scraps of Cat5 cable for most 'wiring'. Strip open a length and you have 4 pairs of conductors already color coded and twisted together. Obviously you won't make 50 foot runs to 1000 LEDs with it, but it will easily run 10 or 15 feet and light a couple dozen LEDs. I guess for longer runs, you could always use one whole twisted pair for + and one pair for -, or even two pair for each. Just make sure it's the stranded type, not the solid conductor - stranded will bend, move and flex, while the solid will fatigue and break after a few bends.

For connections - solder and heat shrink tubing is the cheapest and most reliable connection I've found.


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## Bone Dancer (Oct 7, 2005)

All my leds are battery powered. I bought them to work with 9volt batteries. I only use about ten so it works for what I need.

http://www.niktronixonline.com/category_s/168.htm
This is where I get my leds. The company changed its name but the link still works.


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## BioHazardCustoms (Aug 5, 2009)

+1 to what corey said. I power a lot of LED lighting with old cell phone chargers, and for longer distances, I use cat5 cable. You can buy smaller pieces at thrift stores all the time, usually for just a few cents, so it is cheap, but does the job well. I also solder and heatshrink the connections.


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## corey872 (Jan 10, 2010)

Interesting to see some others using Cat5. Out of curiosity, I looked up some tables. Some, like this one http://wiki.xtronics.com/index.php/Wire-Gauge_Ampacity show 24AWG up around 2-3 amps. Some others show it down around .6A for long lengths, but up around 3.5A for short 'chassis' wiring.

Even being conservative and saying 1-2 amps, or 1000 to 2000mA, that runs quite a few 20mA LEDs or several dozen high power ones. Quite a bargain, especially if you consider getting 4 pairs of wire in each length of Cat5.


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## stagehand1975 (Feb 22, 2010)

Sad to say I use alot of scrap wire from different jobs I do. Most of them however are hooked up with 18ga wire from radio shack using wire nuts and tape. New runs are now being hooked up with 16ga security system or signal type cable. I also use this as speaker wire. Everything is powered from a computer power supply.


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## niblique71 (Dec 2, 2009)

I had to CHime in... (Go Figure?? LOL)

I built these home made vampire clips below. They work FLAWLESSLY.










They puncture landscape wire and are held in place with a hair tie. The advantage of these are that you can have an infinite number of lights in an infinite number of locations with an infinite number of changes as you modify your setup. My setup is now 6 years old and the only disadvantage to this setup is that they are a tiny bit cumbersome to attach, But with practice they are actually very fast and EXTREMELY RELIABLE. If you happen to trip over a wire, they simply detach undamaged. Also the landscape wire is a bit expensive. BUT it will last 15- 20 years EVEN with the puncture holes from previous years.

See the whole LED TUTORIAL Here

Now... another method is to make HPropmans Plug and Play Connection System I am resorting to a Combination of His RCA Boxes Connected to a main landscape wire with my Vampire clips for scenes with a lot of lights concentrated in a single area. I have almost 700' of Landscape wire and 200 Home made LED lights in my 3/4 acre walkthrough.

I say this... If you have a normal display in a normal size yard, Use anything you can to connect your lights... But once you get over 30 lights the connection process MUST be made simpler and more reliable, and faster.

My next connection experiment might be Alligator clips attached to two heavy Duty copper "Rails" mounted on an insulated surface. Cover with a rain proof container or pond liner (Rubber) and it should to be quick and reliable as long as the alligator clips don't rust to bad.

So far I am ONLY Dissapointed that my first 100 lights only had 3' of pigtail wire. Now I have discovered this relatively cheap Wall Wart Wire for the Pigtails. All of my lights now have Long pigtail Leads of around 10' or more.


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## Slanks (Feb 21, 2009)

I run several dozen LED spots in my yard. I have some spools of lamp cord and speaker wire which I wind through my yard so it is near pretty much wherever I need to tap into it. I then attach each length of wire (up to 250 feet) to either a 2 amp wall wart or Malibu light transformer to power the lights.

To attach the light I use T Tap Terminal connectors. I had first looked at Malibu light taps, but at $1 each, I hunted until I found a better method. With the T Tap Terminal connectors, I pop them off at the end of the season, roll up the wire and put it away until the next season. Typically, the following season I can find a connector already in the line for 90% of the spots. If not, I add another one.

The T connectors are available at hardware stores or auto part stores, but I buy the online for a much better price.

Below is a picture of the connectors I use.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/300-NYLON-T...446?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item53f54a2836


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## runeNvash (Aug 8, 2012)

thanks for the suggestions. we decided to just make it work this year and next year we will decide what to do about it. 
niblique71 - i think we might have used that link to make ours years ago to make our lights.


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## Palmdale Haunter (Mar 3, 2012)

We are moving to RCA jacks and cheap Pre made AV cables this year.
This is so we can control the lighting via computer....


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## jaege (Aug 23, 2009)

I use RCA jacks and plugs attached to an old computer power supply. The plugs are ganged in blocks of eight and set into little plastic boxes. All the lights have fairly long leads and I have some "extensions" that I can use to connect one of the gang boxes to another. Works great. Although I will eventually redo the whole thing since the "free" wire I used was either orange or blue. I would like them to all be black to be better hidden at night.


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## runeNvash (Aug 8, 2012)

thanks wish i could give more feed back on your suggestions but i dont know much about this stuff. but i will be sure to show it to my dad.


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## Dminor (Sep 10, 2008)

Here's how I do mine









It's a project box with 4 RCA patch strips and is powered by a 12v 5a power supply.

I make my own cables with male or female RCA connectors on the ends and then those connect to my LED spots, which also have RCA connectors. Essentially making it a "plug & play" system.


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## mroct31 (Nov 10, 2007)

I do mine the same as dminor only I buy 25' RCA cables from monoprice (http://www.monoprice.com/Product?c_id=102&cp_id=10218&cs_id=1021803&p_id=2009&seq=1&format=2) for about $1.75 each which gets me 4 12.5' black wires already to go, just strip and solder! I power them off on one of the many malibu light transformers I have.


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## gadget-evilusions (Jan 26, 2007)

At Forsaken Haunted House, I have ran about 400 various LED lights.

I use strategically placed 10 amp, 12vdc power supply boxes. I use the boxes that are designed for security camera power supply. 









I use Wago 2, 3, and 5 wire snap connectors to all connections. 









I use 24ga power supply wire from Jameco (because it's only $60 for 1000 feet) https://www.jameco.com/webapp/wcs/s...toreId=10001&catalogId=10001&productId=100299 to distribute. I have gone thru about 3000' of that wire. I do calculate all the loading to make sure I don't overload the wire, and I am never more than 50' from any of my power supply boxes usually.


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