The LED Tree

The board was mounted in a NEMA 4 enclosure. And the rat’s nest of red dots overtop of it represents the final connection method chosen to connect the signal lines from the board to the external waterproof connectors. I’m not satisfied with it, but this seemed to be the quickest and best way to work with such small wire. Two 12V power supplies were used to keep the current demand at about 50% of the supply needed by the board.

This is the final, assembled version. The LED strips are about 15.5ft in length. I did not want the tree that big, so I wrapped the strip around a 1inch plastic pipe, at a 1 inch wrap spacing. This yields a tree about 68 inches tall. The hardware for the tree was purchased from Christmas Light Show.

These light strips have a plastic sheath around them, making them water resistant. They are also sticky backed with double sided tape, making it easy to wind the strip around the pipe. To make the pipes a little more water resistant, I found a roll of transparent shrink wrap plastic that covered the entire length of each pole. A ‘T’ fitting was used at the top of the pole as the hanging fixture for the pole.

This is a close-up of the poles. The shrink wrap was pretty thick, and formed well over the LED strips. The ends were sealed with hot glue in the cracks, liquid tape over the hot glue, and rubber tape over that. It should be pretty water tight, although there is enough room in there for condensation to form. Any Ideas?