RGB battens for internally lighting perspex pillars

[Barney]

Thanks all. It looks like the pillars are to be divided into four sections with internal bracing, so lighting from above at an angle or LED pars top and bottom are out.

 

Battens look the best solution, but I need to work out fixings etc. Thanks for the tips regarding cheaper units, I'll let you know what the final solutionis.

[Jack B Drury]

just to confuse things a bit more, could you use something like this?

 

http://www.elationlighting.com/ProductDetails.aspx?ItemNumber=1801&MainId=1&Category=LED%20Lighting

[Barney]

Cheers, I looked at LED tapes, but am not sure the brightness will be good enough to cut through the stage lighting. Am happy to hear of any real world experience...

[dbuckley]

I use LED tape of various types.

 

As pinpoint sources of light, viewed directly, even from several metres away, they are quite bright.

 

However... as a source of illumination in a 400mm square column, back-lighting translucent stuff to compete against front stage lighting - not a hope, unless you have many, many parallel rows of them, and I still think it'll be underdone. The individual LEDs are not as bright as those used in even the el-cheapo LED bars, and the strips don't have the density of LEDs that bars offer.

 

I don't think LED strips ever will be as bright as stand-alone LEDs, as the current draw will make strips impracticable; the current has to flow through flexible PCB tracks, and the "standard" length over which it is expected the striw will work is 5m.

 

Off the wall idea: If you just need one colour, and need a working solution - fluorescent tubes with Lee gel tubes of the correct colour.

 

Of course, you could have two or three tubes with gels, and mix to get a palette of colours...

 

Don't believe anyone who says you can't dim fluorescent tubes over the full range of 0-100%. Maybe you don't even need the full range of control, maybe on/off will do? That's a design decision, rather than a technical problem.