Nice job! I have also considered replacing my dimmer switches (Cooper in my case) with regular switches to see if that fixes my occasional flicker problem. As I said above, it doesn’t happen frequently, but when it does, the flicker is really bad, and I have to turn the lights off. If it’s not the dimmer switches, the only other variables are a) the dimmable driver, or b) my house’s electrical system, which could be affected by other loads on the circuit.
Very cool!
Having just recently begun the Hue adventure, I’m gonna roll with it. I have perhaps 20 feet (3 segments) of over-cabinet shelf space in the kitchen, plus another 8 feet in the dining room and another 12 in the living room. The cost of doing all that in Hue colored LED strips is a bit daunting (nearly $400!), so I’ll be doing it in drips and drabs lol
Why are those Lights so expensive anyway?
Looks good. One question though. What did you use as a diffuser? I was looking at different products, but they all just about double or triple my costs!
Yeah, it’s strange… For my project, the cost of the LED strips themselves was less than $40. The power supply was $88, and the aluminum channels (Amazon) were $44. I also have the cost of the Lutron dimmer, and some misc supplies like wire.
I’m glad that I used the diffusers, you can still see the led ‘dots’ in the reflection off of the shiny countertops when you’re working in the kitchen, but it would have been worse without the them.
I’m about to install LED strips in the laundry/utility room, and I just bought another pack of diffusers from Amazon, these are a bit cheaper, and it includes an additional 1M section. they must be a new product, I don’t remember seeing them when I was shopping last month. In this room, I’m just going to use a $15 LED strip kit that includes a power supply. I’m going to install an electrical outlet above the cabinets (easy to fish a romex wire down the wall to another outlet, and put in an ‘old-work’ electrical box), and I’ll control the LED strips with a SmartThings appliance module.
The all-in cost for this project should be <$100. I’ll only need a couple pieces of the diffuser, and will probably find new LED projects around the house to use the rest one day.
Did you ever determine the cause of the flicker?
No, I didn’t. I planned on dickering around and replacing the dimmers with regular switches, but haven’t gotten around to it. Flickering still happens about once a week.
The most flexible and least cost solution that I have found for cabinet lighting is using these awesome WiFi controllers on SmartThings with inexpensive RGBWW LED strips or any combination of RGB with dual row LED daylight for task lighting or just plain white LED. Even though the controller gives you the ability to control color you can easy just do simple dimming like what the original poster is doing on white lights. No flicker and very easy on the wallet; The controller $15, power supply $8, 5M of LED strips $15. It does use custom code but it is a fun simple project.
You are probably asking why would I ever want RGB color in my kitchen cabinets lighting since I don’t want party lights? I use it for indications of events like, BLUE means the mailbox was opened, VIOLET indicates one of the exterior doors (garage, front, rear) has been opened more than 5 minutes, GREEN means the alarm system is set ON (so don’t open exterior doors before turning OFF) RED means an Alarm triggered, etc.
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Hey dalec, your strip lighting sound reasonable…just what I need in my kitchen for the holidays, can you please walk me through with materials/devices used? Or if there’s an updated option out there that’ll be nice too - cause I’m looking to light the wife kitchen up with colors also.
Thanks!