Office lights: almost done

I’ve found a million other, better things to do, but this weekend I finally got around to making some progress on finishing off the shelving in my office, by which I mean finishing up the stupid lighting idea I had.

The cheap adhesive on the back of the RGBW tape did not stick well at all to the underside of the plywood, so I decided to use a staple gun to attach it semi-permanently. I did some test fires into a piece of scrap plywood to get the staples so they’d stop prior to crushing the tape. I then started along, and got three of the five lighted cubbyholes done before it went wrong in the most predictable fashion ever: I pierced the tape with a staple somehow.

This was immediately evident by the “warm white” color I’d selected being cyan for one segment, and what followed was several hours of work to unsolder the ruined segment and solder a decent one in. At this point I decided to drive the staples in first, and then feed the tape through.

What this meant, however, was that I would have to feed each piece through, then solder and heat-shrink the joins upside down under the shelf, which made the entire job way worse. But by about lunchtime on Sunday I was done, and cycling through all the colors of the rainbow in Home Assistant I was satisfied everything worked.

Next I used the little reciprocating “rennovator” tool to notch out the bullnose trim strip we bought a good couple months ago, and stapled it into place. It almost perfectly hides the LED strip, there’s a couple places where a join wasn’t quite straight so it bows down just enough to peak out at sitting height, but at standing height you cannot see it at all.

All that’s left now is to counter-sink the staples, fill the holes, and one more lick of paint to make it match, and then probably try do something about matching the wood stain on the bits they did not bother to stain where the closet door was.

Another weekend, this one’s over.

Horsham, VIC, Australia

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fwaggle

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Horsham, VIC, Australia

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