Lighting Bar Mills Sokol's Furniture and Mattress Company

[ReadingBob]

I agree!  Very neat and informative.  Thanks.

Thanks Donato!  I'm glad you're finding it informative.

[deemery]

I'm still waiting to hear what happened with that one circuit that wouldn't light...


Slim and I weren't able to connect on my short trip to Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving, so my (roundhouse lighting) parts "are in the mail."



dave

[ReadingBob]

I'm still waiting to hear what happened with that one circuit that wouldn't light...


Slim and I weren't able to connect on my short trip to Pittsburgh over Thanksgiving, so my (roundhouse lighting) parts "are in the mail."



dave

Okay Dave,  here you go.

My 'debugging' process is as follows:

1. I take the handy, dandy little LED tester that I bought from Slim and attach a length of wire to it.  I then touch test each LED in the series, one at a time, by touching the wire attached to the positive side of the tester to the copper tape on the positive side of the LED and, of course, the wire attached to the negative side of the tester to the copper tape on the negative side of the LED.  If the LED lights up that tells me two things.  First, I didn't cook the LED when I soldered it in place and, second, that my connections are sound.



2. Next I want to test to make sure the connections to the Current Limiter are sound.  At this point I already know the first LED works so I remove the wire from the LED tester and take the tester off of my 9 volt battery.  Using some clamps I connect the wire directly the battery posts.  It then touch the wire attached to the positive side of battery to the copper tape on the positive side of the Current Limiter and the wire attached to the negative side of the battery to the copper tape on the negative side of the first LED in the series.  If the LED lights up that confirms that my connections to the Current Limiter are sound, the Current Limiter is okay and didn't reverse it when I soldered it in place.

3. Test the entire series in a fashion similar to step number 2 but this requires more than a 9 volt battery when you do like I did and have three LED's in series with the Current Limiter.  If the series works then the problem is something like what I did.   

My apologies, I forgot to take a "before" photo.  Here's a photo of the circuit after I corrected the issue.  The yellow circle indicates the repair I made.  The red line indicates where had originally connected the negative lead of the last LED - right back to the positive line in.  D'uh.  The plan was in my head when I was wiring everything and I knew where it should go but I failed to execute and connected it to the nearest line.



Using a hot glue gun I connected the three "ceilings" together.


When I put the assembly in place I noticed that the lowest ceiling was clearly visible in the second floor windows.  My measurements were off a wee bit.  This was partly because the bottom of the second floor windows are almost at floor level in the overhang portion of the structure.  There's not a lot of room for error.



I broke down the assembly and, as luck would have it, noticed that where I cut the notches for the supports was perfect for allowing me to trim off the piece of bottom "ceiling" that was going to extend out over the overhang. I did that, which will allow me to drop this ceiling down a little lower and clear the bottom of the windows.





More in a moment...

[ReadingBob]

The ceiling is no longer visible in the window.   



And here we are with the inside lit up.  The window, which aren't in place, have been sprayed with DullCoat to dirty them up a bit.



I haven't started adding the exterior lights yet.  Those will be a bit more challenging.  I plan on adding three gooseneck lights over the large Sokol's sign and several under the canopies to light up the loading docks.  Those will have to go thru the walls and I haven't quite worked out how I'm going to add them yet. 

P.S. - I haven't fixed the 'light leaks' yet.  That's on my radar too.   

Thanks for following along!

[ACL1504]

WOWSER. WOWSER,WOWSER and


                             WOWSER!

[deemery]

Thanks, that's a solid methodology you put together there.  I'm wiring my roundhouse lights in '3 shelves' of 5, so that's why I need an 18v power supply, bigger than anything I happen to have left over from old computers :-)


dave

[martin.ojaste]

Bob, the lit photo is great. When the window installers get there it will be even better. Have you considered putting in a "shadow" interior by the windows? Did you consider having switches to control the lights per floor?

Good luck with the goosenecks. I hope no one is around to hear the cursing while you try to push those wee wires around. LOL

[ReadingBob]

WOWSER. WOWSER,WOWSER and


                             WOWSER!

I'm glad you like it so far.     There's still more to come.   

[ReadingBob]

Thanks, that's a solid methodology you put together there.  I'm wiring my roundhouse lights in '3 shelves' of 5, so that's why I need an 18v power supply, bigger than anything I happen to have left over from old computers :-)


dave

Thanks Dave.  For testing I'm using the power supply for my Digitrax Zephyr.  I really need to come up with something better.  I have some old power supplies from laptops and what not.  I should check the spec's on them and, if I find one that's suitable, reassign it to workbench duty.      

[ReadingBob]

Bob, the lit photo is great. When the window installers get there it will be even better. Have you considered putting in a "shadow" interior by the windows? Did you consider having switches to control the lights per floor?

Good luck with the goosenecks. I hope no one is around to hear the cursing while you try to push those wee wires around. LOL

Thanks Martin.  That's a great idea with the "shadow" interior.  I hadn't considered that.  I'll have to give it some thought.     Those goosenecks are a real joy to wire and install but they're worth the effort. 

[Slim Jerkins]

Nice work Bob! You da man!

Dave texted me last week that you were posting this but with Thanksgiving going on and my son back from school for a little bit this is the first chance I got to post a reply.

So far, what have you found to be the most challenging part with the lighting project? Your feedback can help me tune my clinic presentation.

-slim

[donatode]

Martin, Bob .... what is a "shadow interior"

[ReadingBob]

Martin, Bob .... what is a "shadow interior"

Hi Donato,

It's basically putting objects or cutouts behind the windows that will create shadows or silhouettes that give the appearance that there's stuff inside the building.  They can recognizable shapes, things like a drill press or person, but they don't have to be.  You can't always tell what something is by the outline when it's backlit.  A good example of a simple little detail like this can be found fairly far down on the VectorCut HO Scale Details page.  It's the one titled "Window Cats".  That's the general idea.    

[ReadingBob]

Nice work Bob! You da man!

Dave texted me last week that you were posting this but with Thanksgiving going on and my son back from school for a little bit this is the first chance I got to post a reply.

So far, what have you found to be the most challenging part with the lighting project? Your feedback can help me tune my clinic presentation.

-slim

Thanks Slim!  If anything I've posted is worth sharing please feel free to use it.  Even my blunders.     So far this has been fairly easy.  I fear the challenging part is the next step when I attempt to install exterior lights through the wall and have to connect them inside the structure.  I'm still trying to formulate how I'm going to do that.   

[deemery]

Nice work Bob! You da man!

Dave texted me last week that you were posting this but with Thanksgiving going on and my son back from school for a little bit this is the first chance I got to post a reply.

So far, what have you found to be the most challenging part with the lighting project? Your feedback can help me tune my clinic presentation.

-slim

Thanks Slim!  If anything I've posted is worth sharing please feel free to use it.  Even my blunders.     So far this has been fairly easy.  I fear the challenging part is the next step when I attempt to install exterior lights through the wall and have to connect them inside the structure.  I'm still trying to formulate how I'm going to do that.   

Slim and I have been looking for cheap really small connectors.  The Miniatronics connectors are small but expensive.  Most of what I've found at a good price on eBay is bigger than what I'd want (they're the size of connectors on cordless phone batteries, a bit clunky and hard to hide.)


dave