Not much of an expert on batteries :mrgreen: But I believe you're never suppose to discharge a car battery past 50% or it'll shorten its life The running hours will depend on the capacity of the battery - I think typically they're around 45Amp-hours. With 20 strips it'll last about 19 hours before y...

Welcome pr0letar! Judging by the dimension I would say it is 0.72W per strip - each strip has 3 LEDs. Every 3-LED strip can be cut without damaging the rest so I'd imagine this is sold as 3 x 20 strips attached together. The whole cascade (20 strips) will be about 14.4W, and with Alkaline batteries ...

Haha I was actually thinking of doing that as a last resort if I run out of time. :mrgreen: Thought I'd experiment (never done this so its weirdly fun - but ofc not so fun if it doesn't work) and make it into one circuit so its more clean / minimal. I guess in the end it just goes down to what's che...

Ah I'm not sure actually...these are LED spotlights (had to use Fritzing for the diagrams! ) and I thought normally you'd only need resistors for those tiny LEDs with the 2pin legs?

Sorry guys, need to pick your brains again :oops: Just wanted to check this is the right way of setting up parallel lighting using terminal blocks, before I blow everything up! http://i.imgur.com/mrl4Ii8.jpg 1. If I group all the Live / Neutral / Earth wires into a single terminal for each respectiv...

Aha, thanks Ulisse! Better stick to 110V stuff then haha. As it stands, I think my easiest option (also laziest and probably cheapest :mrgreen:) is to go for 20 of these AC spotlight fittings , wire them in parallel using a junction box / terminal blocks, hide everything inside the pavilion and just...

Quick amperage question... If I take 20 x 120VAC 10W LED Lights ( such as these ) and connected them in parallel and power them straight from the generator, the total current in the circuit would be rougly 83mA x 20 = 1.6Amps. If I then take the same lights that run on 12V DC ( such as these ) and c...

This thread is just plain awesome, this will be our first burn and before even considering rebars I'm already a convert lol We've got a few large shading structures this year made out of standard 2x4 lumbers, the largest one measures 30ft x 50ft... http://i.imgur.com/S1ECt93.jpg The side tarps actua...

lol sorry to spam, I wish i could edit my previous posts :| Did some more research and I believe this is to do with GU10 / MR16 fitting, where the former doesn't require any additional transformers. I'm hoping then that I can get several lights like this that I can just wire together and plug into t...

Hmm actually I've been trying to source IP67 spotlights all morning and they all seem to be LEDs, the cheap ones at least... Initially I thought LEDs were only 12V but then a few of them actually say they have an input voltage of 110-277V, I guess these fittings have a built-in transformer / miniatu...

Thanks guys! Yea I think we're pretty much going to run it straight from the generator. Just need to figure out how to trench the cable now (placing the generator some distance away from the art) and source some IP67 120v spotlights :mrgreen: Then I can just wire all the lights together into a singl...

lol these alternatives sound better already, more fun less work! Sold Although I have never worked with a solar panel before, I presume the driver is used to regulate amperage into the LED lights from the 12V battery to make it more efficient, then the 10A Charge Controller will deal with charging t...

It will be crazy bright in the Playa night. Haha, you might be right. I've always been quite pessimistic about how bright the lights will be, even my renders have probably been quite unrealistic. http://i.imgur.com/uMmVJTZ.jpg Even if you really want all that lighting, why not just run everything f...

Thanks for the explanation guys :D Just as an update I have now decided to run the 160Ah setup off a 250Ah AGM Deep Cycle battery (either Universal or Scorpion), which will be charged during the day using a Samlex 12V 50A charger and should take approximately 4 hours to charge to full! The charger w...

Thanks guys, much clearer now. You don't want to discharge them more than roughly 50% Hmm interesting, I actually thought Deep Cycle batteries were designed to be drained deep, but I keep getting mixed information about whether this is true or not. Didn't notice the 12V output from the generator is ...

Hi folks! This year will be my first burn and unfortunately I am a bit of a noob when it comes to electronics, and so I was hoping I could borrow some of your wisdom :mrgreen: My team and I will be building a small pavilion and in order to light the piece at night I have proposed 20 x 12W LED light ...