Sandy Lake & Northern misc builds, etc.

[Rick]

Dave, you sure have been busy adding the lighting.
Hope you get all the little bugs figured out and fixed.
Keep plugging away it's looking good.

[Bernd]

As I said on MRH, your power supply is causing that flicker. It isn't filtering out the AC component causing the LEDs to flicker. Us a pure filtered DC supply. Batteries supply the purest DC voltage possible.

Bernd

[friscomike]

Howdy Dave, good luck with the lighting.  ~mike

[deemery]

Bernd, I don't think that's the case, but it's definitely a good thought.  2 reasons:  (1) only some of the light strips flickered.  (2) the flickering went away when I tightened up the connector I thought was at fault.  But the voltage from the power supply is a bit less than 12v, I wonder if that's part of the problem.

James, do you happen to have an oscilloscope that you could bring to my layout at some point?

Anyone got experience with cellphone based 'scopes?

dave

[deemery]

The lighting project, at least for this part of the layout, is finally done!  
Here's the LED strip lighting, without the room lighting. 


And the normal viewing, with the room lighting:

No flickering!

Next step on the larger layout would be to add the valence.  But I also need to think about the lighting and valence for the rest of the layout that doesn't have the dropped ceiling.  

But first, some actual -modeling-.  I'll go back and finish the farm scene, adding fencing, the orchard, etc, and the scenery/trees/etc along the back wall.

dave

[Jerry]

Very nice Dave.  I guess it was worth the effort it took.

Jerry

[deemery]

This had a surprisingly high aggravation factor that I wasn't expecting.  This afternoon, I got back to 'real modeling', doing some prep work on tree armatures and playing with 'chenille strip small pine trees".

dave

[ACL1504]

Dave,

Well done on the LED lighting. It does change to look of the layout.

Tom

[deemery]

When I get around to adding the valence, it'll look even better.   If you look at the far right side of my last photo, you'll see a piece of paper taped to the wall.  That's the wiring diagram for the LED strips.  But, the bottom of that paper is approximately where the bottom of the valence will go.

dave

[deemery]

I've been doing 'shrubberies'.  On Amazon, I found this interesting drying rack, I think it's for "unmentionables", but it works well to hold armatures for painting:

I got these armatures on eBay, they're similar to the Woodland Scenics vinyl, but a bit less positionable and they have more branches. 

Now I want 'tree flats', trees with flat backs against the backdrops.  So I use shears to trim away the back branches, and then do the leaves.


This is a combination of several vendors trees and shrubs.


And with the farm buildings in place.  I really need some taller armatures than what I have here so far to go on the left corner.   I also have to do some touch-up on that backdrop boundary.


But overall I'm pretty happy with the results.

dave

[Philip]

   Good looking scene!

[Rick]

Lighting looks good.
I don't see any distracting shadows.
Trees also look good.

[Larry C]

Dave nice lighting effect.The house and barn look right at home amount all that great looking scenery.

[jbvb]

Dave, that came out nicely.  Output voltage less than 12V might be a crummy power brick, but when I saw it on my layout it turned out to be overload - a 2nd brick and divided feeds cured that. A freak accident (screwdriver bit through the screen) killed my scope and I haven't had a real need since I got my DCC and signal color issues resolved.

I also like the "cloudy bright" effect. My own layout has a mix of exposed fluorescent tubes and LED strips, so no sharp shadows and no objects with two or more shadows.

[deemery]

There's a voltage adjustment thingie (resistor?) on the power supply next to the terminals.  I suppose I should "tune" that to 12v.

dave