Monday, April 14, 2014

Experiments with LED lighting

With this layout being in a garage without any air conditioning, I was really concerned about any waste heat being generated by the room and layout lighting so LED lighting for the layout really seems to be the way to go.  I am already lighting the room with LED fixtures and that has work out really well so far.  The technology is hitting main stream lately with the products becoming more practical and more affordable.

I was also concerned about using lighting that would make the layout look good, like natural light.  Setting up a couple of those little LED light panels shown in the last post, I thought things looked good but did not really trust my own color perception completely.

Having noticed in the past that a camera sometimes sees things that my human eye does not, I took some photos of my Ntrak module to test how true different colors are represented under this type of lighting.

Using various locomotives and rolling stock, I was able to check a wide range of colors and have quite satisfied with the results so far.  All of the colors shown in these photos appear very true to the actual items.

So if I use this type of lighting, how many will I need for the whole layout ?

And how many 12 volt DC power supplies ?

These are the next questions that will need to be answered.