LED Lights that are suitable for LEGO?

[General Magma]

Good day!

I'm looking for LED Lights that are suitable for use in LEGO MOCs.

And that would (much preferably) be the type of LED lights that are connected to a cable (or cables) - not the "bulb with metal rods" kind of things.

They can range from small to big, all kinds of different colours, and some should be able to fit into certain pieces. I'm looking for LED lights that can be re-used for different MOCs and thus, different things - mainly (if not only) Star Wars / Sci-Fi MOCs.

To show you what kind of things I'm planning to do with them, I'll give you a few examples (not my pics):

That should sum it up pretty well. Hopefully somebody can help me find out what kind of LED Lights these are

and where I should be able to get them. And if a store in The Netherlands happens to sell them, then that would be fantastic.

Thanks in advance!

Edited June 27, 2015 by General Magma

[SteampunkDoc]

A lot of people use Lifelites.

I do, and they're awesome.

And while I don't have any experience with them, Brickstuff lights look good as well.

[Missing Brick]

Cheapest & most flexible option is to use a bag of leaded LEDs with some thin connecting wire, a pack of croc clips, 9V battery and a 2K series resistor to limit the current. Also useful to have a soldering iron for connecting the wires to the LED legs. Bit of a pain to setup but the benefit is you can use them in lots of different ways - threading them into lots of different types of bricks - compared to an off-the-shelf system which ties you into one particular lighting brick. If you don't want the hassle of soldering then you can do alot with LED key-ring torches - although the batts don't last long.

Edited June 27, 2015 by Missing Brick

[L@go]

(snip) Brickstuff lights look good as well.

I have no experience with lighting LEGO, but I bought a bunch of Brickstuff lights at Brickworld in Chicago last week, and managed to light one of my MOCs so well that it seriously impressed both me and others who saw it, in less than two hours. While Lifelites, as far as I know, is considerably cheaper, the one big advantage Brickstuff has, compared to Lifelites, is the size of their componentz. The wires are thinner, to the point that you will in most cases be able to wedge them between bricks or plates, and the lights are so small that they will actually fit underneath 1x1 plates (not tiles, mind you). Together with the fact that the power plugs are so small that they easily go through a hollow stud, that means that you can pretty much light up any MOC you've built without having to rebuild anything. And that was the clincher for me.

I'll be working on lighting some more MOCs over the next couple of weeks, and I'll be posting some pictures of the results in my Flickr stream.

[General Magma]

Cheapest & most flexible option is to use a bag of leaded LEDs with some thin connecting wire, a pack of croc clips, 9V battery and a 2K series resistor to limit the current. Also useful to have a soldering iron for connecting the wires to the LED legs. Bit of a pain to setup but the benefit is you can use them in lots of different ways - threading them into lots of different types of bricks - compared to an off-the-shelf system which ties you into one particular lighting brick. If you don't want the hassle of soldering then you can do alot with LED key-ring torches - although the batts don't last long.

This sounds like the way to do it to me, thanks! So after seeing this reply, I decided to get myself some of those leaded LEDs and the resistors. I should be able to find the rest. Do you happen to have a tutorial or know of a tutorial somewhere so I can see how to do it effectively? So far, I've only found videos in which the LEDs were put very closely near one another, and what I'm really looking for is a way to be able to spread out the LEDs over an entire MOC - so longer wires,

and all of them very separate from one another so I could, say... put one LED light in location A, put another in location B, 30 studs removed from A,

and then another one in location C at a distance of 50 studs. No matter how easy it might be, I would prefer not to accidentally mess it up in any way,

so a link to a good tutorial showing how to do what I described would be much appreciated!

Oh, and by divided wires, I mean something much like this:

http://shop.lego.com/en-US/LEGO-Power-Functions-Light-8870

A lot of people use Lifelites.

I do, and they're awesome.

And while I don't have any experience with them, Brickstuff lights look good as well.

I have no experience with lighting LEGO, but I bought a bunch of Brickstuff lights at Brickworld in Chicago last week, and managed to light one of my MOCs so well that it seriously impressed both me and others who saw it, in less than two hours. While Lifelites, as far as I know, is considerably cheaper, the one big advantage Brickstuff has, compared to Lifelites, is the size of their componentz. The wires are thinner, to the point that you will in most cases be able to wedge them between bricks or plates, and the lights are so small that they will actually fit underneath 1x1 plates (not tiles, mind you). Together with the fact that the power plugs are so small that they easily go through a hollow stud, that means that you can pretty much light up any MOC you've built without having to rebuild anything. And that was the clincher for me.

I'll be working on lighting some more MOCs over the next couple of weeks, and I'll be posting some pictures of the results in my Flickr stream.

Those seem like good options as well, thanks! I'll have a look at those, too, and I'll keep an eye out on your stream.

I'd be interested in seeing that.

Edited July 3, 2015 by General Magma

[Missing Brick]

For 'permanent' layouts, lifelites are probably easiest and tidiest. But I normally just cobble stuff together for a photoshoot then dismantle it - so I don't care if it's a mess of cables and croc clips round the back - as long as it's out of sight. 

For roof lights LED torches are easiest. You can just sit them face down on a transclear brick and adjust the brightness by shifting the torch sideways to vary the amount of light that gets through the tranclear brick. All the roof-lights in my sig pics are cheapo LED torches.

For large area colour washes iPads are great: just google the colour you want, screen grab it, then zoom it up to fill the screen. Then hold the ipad up next to the camera while you're taking the shot. The blue and red washes in my Hadley's hope pic were done this way.

I only use the discrete LEDs for scale lighting within the scene itself. (eg. The wall lights in the Hadley's Hope pic).

For connecting up I  suggest you get some croc clips -so you don't have to solder anything initially. Amazon have some v.cheap packs of 10:

  http://www.amazon.co.uk/RHX-Alligator-Crocodile-Leads-Jumper/dp/B00BQW4U20/ref=pd_sim_sbs_60_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0587YF0REPFVJ0ENY6GB

For power I use a 9V PP3 battery.  This can drive three white LEDs in a daisy chain but can handle multiple chains in parallel if you need more than 3 LEDs.

Remember to connect + and - terminals the right way round. If a LED is connected backwards it will block the current and prevent the chain lighting up.

Long wires between LEDs are fine since you're only running a tiny current (say between 5mA and 20mA per chain).

I have a reel of really thin black 'wire wrap' AWG30 wire I use for connections when croc clips aren't suitable. 

For the LEDs - I've got a bag of 4.9mm diameter white LEDs. These are the perfect size for fitting into a lego stud hole. These drop about 2.7V at 10mA.  You need to put a resistor in series with them to limit the current otherwise you'll blow them.

Eg. If you're driving one LED from a 9V battery the LED takes 2.7V so you need a resistor than will drop 9-2.7 = 6.3V at 10mA

R= V/I = 6.3/ 10mA = 630ohm. So anything around 1K will do.

If you're driving 3 LEDs in a chain you need a resistor to drop 9-3x2.7 = 0.9V

R=V/I = 0.9V/10mA = 90 ohms.  (So 100 ohms would be fine - just one resistor per chain)

The resistor can go anywhere in the chain. If you want the LEDs dimmer, increase the resistor value. Brighter, reduce it (but try not to exceed the max LED current - typically 20mA - otherwise you'll damage your LED.

It's easy to experiment with different resistor values if you use the croc clips to connect to the resistor.

That's about it. Happy lighting!

Edited July 3, 2015 by Missing Brick

[dr_spock]

Here is a handy online LED resistor calculator. Red LEDs have lower voltages than say white LEDs if I recall. I am looking to solder my own, I ordered 50 white LEDs for $1. They seem to fit in the Technic sized holes. I think they'll work for train lights.

[General Magma]

*snip*

Awesome, thank you! I'll start attempting something using that one of these days.

Here is a handy online LED resistor calculator. Red LEDs have lower voltages than say white LEDs if I recall. I am looking to solder my own, I ordered 50 white LEDs for $1. They seem to fit in the Technic sized holes. I think they'll work for train lights.

Handy indeed, thanks! Where did you get those LEDs from?

Edited July 4, 2015 by General Magma

[dr_spock]

Handy indeed, thanks! Where did you get those LEDs from?

I ordered them from eBay.

[Andy D]

This is a great and timely topic for me. I am getting ready to start my Halloween display, then my Christmas display.

I have tried numerous ways to light my displays with large scale lighting and I really did not totally like it, so this year I decided to go the LED route. I like to have my Halloween display up by early September, then I disassemble it and put up Christmas. Obviously these are not permanent displays and I would like to use the same group of LED's for both.

I have looked at both Lifelights and Brickstuff. I like Brickstuff best because of the small size, but that could also be it's downfall for reusability.

Question:

Does anyone here have any experience with reusing the Brickstuff lighting system?

How is the durability?

Thanks,

Andy D

Edited July 4, 2015 by Andy D