Frozenshinobi

This may sound silly, but I need to find a way to light up the bottom outer perimeter of a desk with some red or blue lights to give it a neon glow look. First thing that popped into my head is to line the bottom of the desk with some cathodes or something and their ambient light would bounce off the ground for the effect. There is a indentation at the bottom of the desk to hide the cathodes themselves so no one would go blind staring at them. Only problem is how to wire them up? The total length to be lit up is about 16 feet, so I need a way to string 16 12" cathodes together and connect it to a PSU, is that possible? Maybe some LEDs would work? I looked into el wire but it seems to dim, it only lights up itself, I want it to have some ambiance.

Sorry this is a little off topic but I didn't know where else to ask...

__________________
30" 2560x1600 Display

Easty

Sounds a bit hard work... I'd look at some cheap lighting at places like home depot. I got a
couple of stainless steel touch desk light and have them at each side of my long corner table $9 each. If you want to create ambient light you can use various bulbs and paper shades to create some cool effects

__________________
website Fragtastic!


An Englishman in Ft Worth MontrealNC
All my photo's

Ellipsis

I would use Red Rope Light

trendy

This could be done, but it would be hard to cover such a wide area with cold cathodes and hook them all up to one PSU, unless you want to do some wire lengthening, which wouldn't be hard if you get a cheap soldering iron and some 18G wire (i think that's the size).

You could even hook up a few switches to turn them on and off if you want to get really creative

__________________

tenchimuyo93

Custom neon and transformers for 110. that would be my best way. or if push came to shove automotive neon and a 110VAC-12VDC power inverter.

Frozenshinobi

I guess wire lengthening is fine, but how would I do it?

Here is the type of cathode I want to use, it has that white power wire coming out from only one end, which plugs into this blue box looking thing. The box is supposedly sound activated or something? Either way I don't want sound activated, I want the light to stay still at the same brightness for a long time. The white power cable has some 2 pin connector, can it plug into anything other than that blue box? I don't think it would fit onto a fan connector. How can I lengthen and solder 16 of these things together and then plug all that into a single PSU?

I don't think the rope light would be bright enough, these cold cathodes seem perfect so if there is a way to use them I would like to try them first.

__________________
30" 2560x1600 Display

Frozenshinobi

Custom neon? Like order a neon light to custom fit the desk? I guess that would be the ultimate answer but if the cold cathodes are possible I'd rather try those first.

__________________
30" 2560x1600 Display

Frozenshinobi

Ok so it appears these cathodes run on 12vac, that's why they come with inverters. So I'm going to line the perimeter of the desk with cathodes and extend their power cables so all the cathodes reach 8 of these blue box inverters tucked away in the corner.

Any one know what size these wires are? Are you sure they are 18g?

__________________
30" 2560x1600 Display

l Casualty

i did something like this once. I bought a few blue case lights and used a AC power adapter, cut the end off power adapter and connected the wires to the 4pin molex connection. Its ugly but you can hide the cables. Might not be what your looking for but i thought it might help.

dskina

You can try el wire, also. Just string it around your desk and power it.

__________________