LED Desk Back Lighting

Why?

Because what the hell it looks cool! Who doesn’t want it to look like they’re some crazy nut head with colors flashing everywhere, but on a more serious note. I bought a 16 foot strip of Waterproof LEDs off of Amazon for $25 which included the power adapter, a 44 key remote with 6 “DIY” settings, IR Control box, and the 16 feet of LED strip. Let me start off by saying this is an amazing deal and these work great for there intended purpose and are great for how cheap they are. However there are some things I wish the company had done differently, the adhesive first of all is EXTREMELY bad from my experience, I left the strip running over night, and had part of it on the side and other parts on the bottom of my desk so they were upside down, by morning the parts that were upside down had completely fallen down and it looked like I half-assed the job. The best solution I’ve found so far is to use a staple gun and staple the strips under the desk, keep in mind if you do this, you will want to get the waterproof version and staple where the gold connectors are it will say +12v then GRB or BRG depending on how you are looking at it. This is so that if your staple gun were to be powerful enough that it smashes through the waterproofing and shorts the circuit or something happens because of a staple you can just cut it there and solder strips together. Next, the IR receiver/RGB control box, the thing is fine but the IR part of it has such a short cable and the range is not so good you have to point the remote directly at the receiver for it to work but that’s only a small complaint. The remote works great if you want to do the pre-programmed colors, but when you want to use the DIY modes it’s a little confusing and I haven’t gotten that figured out completely yet even! The modes that the remote has are Jump, Fade, Flash and Auto.

Jump = Comes in a 3 or 7 color option, essentially switching between the normal colors it can make so red, green, blue, yellow, purple, light blue, and as close to white as possible with no white LED on the strip. The remote has a Slow and Quick button to slow down or quicken the switching between colors, it gets pretty close to a club/dance floor quickness but not quite there.

Jump shown in the 3 color mode

Fade = Comes in a 3 or 7 color option, fades between either 3 colors or 7 colors, you can also use the Slow, or Quick button to control the speed with this mode, and it looks amazing in my opinion, definitely one of my favorite modes.

Fade in the 7 color mode

Flash = Fairly straight forward you pick a color and then click flash and it will switch between that color and off, you are also able to use the Slow or Quick buttons to speed up or slow down the flashing.

Flash using the color white

Auto = Runs through every mode including both the 3 and 7 color options, will flash white when it gets to the flash mode

The remote also has intensity levels, from what I can tell it has 5 different levels of intensity, the highest level provides enough light at my desk to do homework even, the lowest is good if you want to make an orange like color for when you go to bed if you sleep in the same room as your computer.

Conclusion

Overall, the strip is great for the price with what you get and how much you pay for it, there are minor issues but nothing that completely makes the product dysfunctional, it will not fall or move if you stick it right side up or to the top of something like a desk, but when upside down it has some trouble and needs some help from a staple gun or something else, keep in mind the adhesive does leave a pretty annoying residue after about 6 hours, so get it the way you want it and then leave it, especially if you might see the residue daily. Overall I’d give the thing 3 1/2 out of 5 stars, the adhesive really is a problem but it is a great product for the price and does it’s job in most situations. Amazon buy link: http://www.amazon.com/SUPERNIGHT%C2%AE-Waterproof-Flexible-300leds-Changing/dp/B00ASHQQKI/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1423189731&sr=8-1&keywords=supernight+16

Other Pictures

This is a blog entry from my new blog http://thefilthybit.wordpress.comwhere I talk about my projects and not sure what else yet but that's it for now, I will continue to copy over my blog entries from my website to the LTT forum blogging area unless I'm told my a mod or admin to stop for some reason. Otherwise have a good day/night wherever you guys are.