Landscape Lighting etc.

[Gordon]

I’m looking at doing semi-permanent Holiday lights and incorporating landscape/foliage/walkway/security lights.

There are lots of ws2811 RGB LED floodlights for purchase online, but I don’t see a lot of spots, or any walkway lights, etc ( Your Pixel Store has a spot/flood, Wallys has ‘path lights’ ). Something else can always be modified or just fabricated. But..

Are there any vendors/products to check out?

Are there any modification projects to check out?

Are there any Christmas light companies that operate ws2811 with landscape products to check out ( 24/36/48v power )( Govee/24v?Appeck??)

Or are there any informative posts/forums/websites on the subject?

Thanks in advance.

 

[MikeKrebs]

Buy a "cheap" landscape light and retrofit a pixel.

 

[fugley]

id been playing with a similar idea and was to get some throw away cheap solar lights and replace the insides with pixels, main reason was to get the housing and the reflector without have to make something

 

[Mark_M]

I retro fitted some Bunnings bought solar lights with a 12v warm white LED module inside. Each light is 3w.
It would be nice to have these as pixels but I don't have a need for changing colours. These are purely decorative lighting while my show is off/packed away.




Although a downside is these cheap solar lights do not last outside.
These 'stainless steel' ones are rusting and the plastic diffuser is breaking down.
This one had it's top knocked off by someone.

 

[fugley]

this is becoming a rabbit hole lol
you've used a LED module similar to THIS just in white
i'm thinking something like that would be better for what garden lighting i was working on
brighter, addressable, RGB if needing color

 

[Mark_M]

I'm using one of these 3W warm white LED modules.


So I think one of these per garden light stake would be a good balance of price and size:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1624271569.html

By all means, go brighter if you want. But heat dissipation from a plastic solar light's housing is very small.

 

[fugley]

low and behold id just found the same listing as you've post .75w
ill step away for five minutes before buying the internet lol

 

[Iain]

Are there any modification projects to check out?

I wanted to integrate my pool lights so I tried some iterations of cheap COB LEDs from Ali, but I ended up with $10 Crees from element14. There’s some more here.

 

[Lachi3]

I have also fallen down the addressible garden light rabbit hole... lol

I've been looking a while for some rgbw spotlights to light up my garden, but i've had no luck on Ali or pretty much anywhere else online.
So for the past couple day's i've been looking at making my own, so that they can be retrofit into those 12v lights you see everywhere on Ali. I did notice that you can find the bare ws2811 chip, but surpisingly no sk6812 (for rgbw) which was a bit annoying. But i did the TM1814 chip, which seems to be almost the same.

In theory i should be able to make a pcb for those high power rgbw led's you can find, and be able to retrofit them into the regualr spotlights.
At this point, i havent really done anything with it, i was just kinda playing around. But if i do get anywhere i'll post it here.

 

[fugley]

I have also fallen down the addressible garden light rabbit hole... lol

I've been looking a while for some rgbw spotlights to light up my garden, but i've had no luck on Ali or pretty much anywhere else online.
So for the past couple day's i've been looking at making my own, so that they can be retrofit into those 12v lights you see everywhere on Ali. I did notice that you can find the bare ws2811 chip, but surpisingly no sk6812 (for rgbw) which was a bit annoying. But i did the TM1814 chip, which seems to be almost the same.

In theory i should be able to make a pcb for those high power rgbw led's you can find, and be able to retrofit them into the regualr spotlights.
At this point, i havent really done anything with it, i was just kinda playing around. But if i do get anywhere i'll post it here.

just looking for pixels as ya do lol on ETOP page and found THIS which just happens to be RGBW

 

[Lachi3]

Oh! they look good.

Oh well, i'm sure it'll be a fun project anyway

 

[Iain]

In theory i should be able to make a pcb for those high power rgbw led's you can find, and be able to retrofit them into the regualr spotlights.

There’s a few ways of doing it. You can buy COB LEDs which are designed for 120/240V AC and also those designed for 12/24/36 etc V DC. The DC ones need a driver. You can buy a “constant current” driver (or build, but I never understood them well enough) or a constant voltage driver. I bought a 4 channel DMX dimmer and 36V power supply and essentially made a constant voltage 4 channel addressable LED. A single 36V 47W Cree is too bright to look at.

CV is easier as any sized power supply will work, but they can run away and burn out the LED if they get hot.

CC you need to match the driver to the approximate power of the LED or as you dim it, nothing will happen until you get down to the current of the LED.

Hope that helps a bit. It took me ages to get this far, but after that it’s just a matter of putting together the parts you want!