Ikea Dioder LED strips?

TPA · Dec 8, 2007

Just curious, has anyone else here played with the Ikea Dioder LED strips? Ikea just opened in Orlando and I've been there once a week since it opened (80+ miles away). They have their Dioder series of undercabinet lighting, which are very thin LED strips and discs. So far I've picked up a multicolor set and white set and am very impressed with how thin yet bright they are. Still not 100% sure where I'm going to use them yet, but they're LED, so I just had to buy them. I'm thinking I might end up using them in places where I was planning on using T5's or maybe where T5's would have been too large.

One thing which caught my eye is that they have small switch-mode transformers in the line which show 120vAC/0.1A primary, 12vDC/5 watts secondary, opening my mind up to all sorts of uses for these lights. My readings with a Kill-a-watt meter seem to confirm they're operating well within this range, 2 watts with only single colors illuminated, 6 watts / 11vA with all colors lit. The white-only strips use 2 watts total and have a rather nice color temperature to them, guessing about 3100K.

If anyone wants pics, let me know.

nutz_about_lights · Dec 8, 2007

Hey TPA, in fact I only saw those lights on fri! Those look really nice, but for 5 mins I was fiddling with the strip and wondering what type of LED was it. Didn't look like luxeon or rebel or cree to me. :thinking:

NX3 · Dec 9, 2007

I got a set about 6 months ago. I've got them stuck on the back on my Dell LCD 19" making a sort of home made Philips ambilight lcd. They do a ok job for what I want as the screen is in a dark'ish corner.

ACMarina · Dec 9, 2007

I've had mixed experience with LEDs from Ikea - out of four lamps, I had one (the fiber-optic style) died out.. I did run it for over a year straight, though, so that might have something to do with it..

ggb667 · Sep 12, 2008

I bought quite a few of these. I don't know how many light strips you can connect together.

I tried 12 with one transformer (the multi-colored versions), but it overheats and turns itself off.

I hope it's more than 4, because that's an awful lot of wiring and transformers and things to hide.

Thanks,
-G

P.S. IKEA was no help at all, they have no technical support and couldn't send me to an engineering department or anywhere else. Does anyone with a EE background know what the safe limits of this device is? I don't want to burn it out or damage it.

ggb667 · Sep 12, 2008

OK, 6 connected strips connected together still goes on and off.

It only turns off for a brief period however.

It does get hot. I am worried about damaging the system.

I opened up the transformer and stared blankly at it for a few minutes. It has 2 IC's, a capacitor, a voltage regulator and some things I don't know what they are (volatage inverter?). Did not look like there were any servicable/upgradable components. Can a EE or someone with embedded electronics experience give it a look?

1. Does anyone know if reducing the length of the wire will lower the resistance enough to keep the power from exceeding the supply's capacity?

2. Does anyone know if the power strip connectors can be purchased somewhere so I can make the wire exactly fit, instead of having to wrap up all this excess?

3. Would reducing the AC wire to the transformer's length have any effect on the overall resistance of the system (would making the 120v AC wire shorter increase capacity)?

StarHalo · Sep 13, 2008

I got a white set of these a few weeks ago and still haven't gotten around to playing with it. I can say they're remarkably bright and have a very neutral white color, not cold/violet or warm at all. I was a little worried about the price, but Lowe's sells far dimmer and far more violet strips at the same price, so it appears to be a great deal.

broadgage · Sep 17, 2008

ggb667 said:
OK, 6 connected strips connected together still goes on and off.

It only turns off for a brief period however.

It does get hot. I am worried about damaging the system.

I opened up the transformer and stared blankly at it for a few minutes. It has 2 IC's, a capacitor, a voltage regulator and some things I don't know what they are (volatage inverter?). Did not look like there were any servicable/upgradable components. Can a EE or someone with embedded electronics experience give it a look?

1. Does anyone know if reducing the length of the wire will lower the resistance enough to keep the power from exceeding the supply's capacity?

2. Does anyone know if the power strip connectors can be purchased somewhere so I can make the wire exactly fit, instead of having to wrap up all this excess?

3. Would reducing the AC wire to the transformer's length have any effect on the overall resistance of the system (would making the 120v AC wire shorter increase capacity)?

1) I dont believe that reducing the length of the low voltage wire will help at all. A shorter wire will have less resistance and might even result in the LEDs drawing very slightly MORE current, and thus worsening any overloading of the supply.

2)Dont know, sorry

3)I dont believe that altering the length of the AC supply wire will make any difference att all. The mains current is only about 0.1 amp, and the resultant voltage drop in the wire will be minute.

ggb667 · Sep 19, 2008

Uggh. That's terrible. I thought if you reduced the resistance it would cut the required power.

-G

LED-FX · Sep 21, 2008

ggb667 said:
OK, 6 connected strips connected together still goes on and off.

It only turns off for a brief period however.

It does get hot. I am worried about damaging the system.

I opened up the transformer and stared blankly at it for a few minutes. It has 2 IC's, a capacitor, a voltage regulator and some things I don't know what they are (volatage inverter?). Did not look like there were any servicable/upgradable components. Can a EE or someone with embedded electronics experience give it a look?

1. Does anyone know if reducing the length of the wire will lower the resistance enough to keep the power from exceeding the supply's capacity?

2. Does anyone know if the power strip connectors can be purchased somewhere so I can make the wire exactly fit, instead of having to wrap up all this excess?

3. Would reducing the AC wire to the transformer's length have any effect on the overall resistance of the system (would making the 120v AC wire shorter increase capacity)?

Reducing wire lenght either side will have negligible effect on current consumption, sorry.

Have some dioders in workshop somewhere, as far as remember fairly standard IDC ribboncable connector, Frys, Mouser Digikey etc

Again AFAIR the colour sequencing is internal to the PSU, to connect more strips your going to have to replace it and the psu, its no big shakes, a 12V D.C. wallwart will cover the PSU and for control a Big Clive RGB sequencer:

http://www.bigclive.com/shop.htm

Adam

dmmathews · Dec 31, 2008

I don't think this has been asked... Has anyone modified the length of the wire from the lights to the connector? I need about 3 feet more on one. So I was thinking about cutting the extra length from another and soldering them back together.

jackcalifornia · Jun 6, 2009

I found the same kit as the ikea dioder from light enhancing designs at ledlightingkit dot com and those kits have a remote. I put 3 kits up and the same remote works for all of them, its so sick and its the same price as the dioder. With the ones I have on remote I don't have to stumble around after drinking at night trying to find the off switch :twothumbs

I am still looking for a 12 foot strip kit solution on some crown moulding I have, let me know if you have any ideas.

quiet runner · Aug 26, 2010

dmmathews said:
I don't think this has been asked... Has anyone modified the length of the wire from the lights to the connector? I need about 3 feet more on one. So I was thinking about cutting the extra length from another and soldering them back together.

I have them under my kitchen cabinets, turning on with a motion detector switch in the wall. I followed the instructions on the number per transformer, which I think was 4 max. I did cut and lengthen the low voltage wire, to run it under the kitchen window and over to strips under another cabinet. It works FANTASTIC. My only complaint is shopping at IKEA, which is brutal. But the lights work great.

StarHalo · Aug 26, 2010

Wow, old thread; how the hell did this get 16,000+ views with only 12 posts?!

I installed these strips atop my kitchen cabinets shortly after I posted, nothing professional or complex, just placed them and hid the mains wire leading down to an available socket, where I plug it in nightly. They've performed without incident since then, and are gorgeous nighttime ambient uplighting. The only notable nitpick is that if they're left on for many hours, the power supply starts throwing off quite a bit of AM radio interference, but it's not present for some time after startup.

As I noted in another thread, there is a multi-color Dioder set available, but the white this set produces is quite violet and 5mm-ish; the white-only set is beautifully neutral, probably right around 5000K.

rob3rto · Aug 27, 2010

Just to add to the resurrection, I bought a set of these and mounted them behind my 40" LCD TV with blue-tak. Great for watching films without tiring your eyes witht the main lights off.

My brother bought two sets, chopped off the PSU and wired them directly to his leisure battery in his VW Camper but kept the switches. The light output is fantastic with one row of 4 lit down one side of the ceiling but with both, man its bright.

BrightEye · Apr 9, 2014

Does anyone know where to get similar cables so I can make them stretch further? I don't have a soldering gun. Just wanted to plug something in to extend them.

warwickmichael · Mar 10, 2015

ggb667 said:
I bought quite a few of these. I don't know how many light strips you can connect together.

I tried 12 with one transformer (the multi-colored versions), but it overheats and turns itself off.

I hope it's more than 4, because that's an awful lot of wiring and transformers and things to hide.

Thanks,
-G

P.S. IKEA was no help at all, they have no technical support and couldn't send me to an engineering department or anywhere else. Does anyone with a EE background know what the safe limits of this device is? I don't want to burn it out or damage it.

idleprocess · Mar 14, 2015

warwickmichael said:
P.S. IKEA was no help at all, they have no technical support and couldn't send me to an engineering department or anywhere else. Does anyone with a EE background know what the safe limits of this device is? I don't want to burn it out or damage it.

Per their assembly documentation pictograms, it can handle 4 strips per transformer - not 8, not 6, but 4. Looking at IKEA's page for the product line, it appears that they only sell them as turnkey kits, so they're generally foolproof so long as you follow the instructions.

One could go to some effort to puzzle out the voltage and current limits capabilities of the power supply, but the limit of 4 strips per seems the most relevant bit of information. All we know is that there are 4 strips of 12 LED's and the system is rated at 4.3W. Back of the napkin we can simplistically assume ~90mW per LED dividing 4.3W by 48. But we don't know LED Vf, strip topology (12, 6, 4, or 3 LED's in series), nor how current limitation is performed (other than knowing it's on the strip itself since you can connect the strips however you like).

Ikea Dioder LED strips?

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