# LED spotlight revamp



## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

After two years of setting up my haunt with 100 different spotlights wired to a 12V power source, I've gotten tired with so many wires running all over my lawn and 70 spotlights sticking up all over the place. It looks awesome at night, but not during the day. I've been mulling over some possibilities and have come up with a partial solution. I have no idea if I'll get this completed this year, but in the future I plan to integrate a lot of my lighting into my cemetery fence. I'm thinking of using 12V LED light strips that with stick directly onto the fence panels and use teporary connectors to link each panels worth of light strings to the main power source. I am also thinking of mounting some adjustable spotlights on the backs of tombstones to further light the back of the display. We'll see what I get done.


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## Lunatic (Oct 3, 2006)

I think those are some good ideas. I too want to eventually improve the lighting throughout my graveyard. I hope to gain some more ideas from this thread. Thanks GF!


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## pshort (May 6, 2008)

If I recall right, you're running those LED lights from an Arduino, presumably with one light per Arduino output? Or am I totally off-base now?


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

pshort said:


> If I recall right, you're running those LED lights from an Arduino, presumably with one light per Arduino output? Or am I totally off-base now?


 Not quite, I'm running sixteen different channels of banks of 10 or 20 LEDs each, I know a strip might take more power, but I can easily add multiple 12 volt6 power sources to my project if necessary. And yes, i am using an arduino still.


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## RoxyBlue (Oct 6, 2008)

I think this is a clever idea. Having the lights incorporated into the fencing would make them much less obtrusive.


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## Haunted Spider (Sep 6, 2010)

I made a bunch of the spots and wired them onto the fence in my yard. I still use the big spot LED enclosures too and have most of those right by the fence. 

As well, you don't have to mount your LEDs to the tombstones, but hammer a piece of rebar into the ground behind them and attach the LEDs to that, assuming you have LED spots that can be mounted and moved for directionality.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

*Good Idea*



Haunted Spider said:


> I made a bunch of the spots and wired them onto the fence in my yard. I still use the big spot LED enclosures too and have most of those right by the fence.
> 
> As well, you don't have to mount your LEDs to the tombstones, but hammer a piece of rebar into the ground behind them and attach the LEDs to that, assuming you have LED spots that can be mounted and moved for directionality.


Good idea, I already have a ton of rebar. I'm going to have to figure out the sprinkler system at the new house.


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## hpropman (Jul 27, 2008)

sound like an interesting idea, I would like to see what you come up with. Any pictures yet?


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## Joe_31st (Aug 20, 2013)

goneferal, have any pictures of your old LED spotlight setup? I'm curious as to what you had cooking. I had a few small LED spotlights setup last year, and this year I'm thinking of expanding the setup.


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## Chuck (Oct 10, 2009)

I have toyed with this idea as well. I have a few of those LED strips left over from another project. The ones I have have the waterproof epoxy on them and they are 16ft in length with 300 LED's on them. The specs say the light output is about 1000 lumens. Each strip requires 12v 2a to run.

I ran these as down lighting on my outside bar and they are bright and look good. However, I am not sure how good they will work on the fence.

I will take a fence panel out of the shed this weekend and test it out.


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## Jaybo (Mar 2, 2009)

I ran a 16ft length of RGB strip lighting down the back of our front fence panels last year. I used one of the cheap 24 button infrared remotes to set the brightness and color. It worked great!


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

Jaybo said:


> I ran a 16ft length of RGB strip lighting down the back of our front fence panels last year. I used one of the cheap 24 button infrared remotes to set the brightness and color. It worked great!


Nice! That's a great idea.


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## george_darkhill (Aug 8, 2013)

I Highly recommend going DMX, you can control the RGB LEDs from a dmx controller, or a Computer software like Qlab for Mac or VSA for PC


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

*Thanks*



george_darkhill said:


> I Highly recommend going DMX, you can control the RGB LEDs from a dmx controller, or a Computer software like Qlab for Mac or VSA for PC


Thanks, but I've already built my own LED driver from scratch (with lots of help) and have put in hours of sequencing in Vixen, so I'm sticking with that setup. I did however order 6 16ft long LED strips that I will attach to the back of my fence and then just use some fill floods that I can hide behind my tombstones to hit the back of my display. Now, all I need to do is rewire my project box to make it more efficient and less problem prone.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

OK, I posted some daylight photos of last year's haunt with the old spotlights and wires.

http://goneferalinid.blogspot.com/2013/09/haunt-lighting-overhaul.html


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

Jaybo said:


> I ran a 16ft length of RGB strip lighting down the back of our front fence panels last year. I used one of the cheap 24 button infrared remotes to set the brightness and color. It worked great!


I just got the same but in single color.


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## goneferal (Sep 8, 2010)

Chuck said:


> I have toyed with this idea as well. I have a few of those LED strips left over from another project. The ones I have have the waterproof epoxy on them and they are 16ft in length with 300 LED's on them. The specs say the light output is about 1000 lumens. Each strip requires 12v 2a to run.
> 
> I ran these as down lighting on my outside bar and they are bright and look good. However, I am not sure how good they will work on the fence.
> 
> I will take a fence panel out of the shed this weekend and test it out.


That is exactly what I'm doing.


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