Sometimes I think LED strips are the greatest thing since sliced bread. I mean, why install a simple 120V light socket when you can muck around with 5m-long strips and power supplies? Well, whatever, I think they’re fun and useful.

I’ve already installed 5m strips in my basement, storage area, and under the kitchen cabinets, but now my thoughts are roaming to more creative, less utilitarian uses. So allow me to present my project #1: a new bedroom lamp.

The unusual shade was a gift some years ago. Till now, it’s just decorated stair landings, lit up with a tealight candle once every π blue moons. But with my dark new bedroom needing more light, I started to ponder how I might combine the shade with LEDs.

It didn’t take much thought to come up with a LED strip spiral concept, but the details remained vague.

My chosen LED strip was relatively high-powered, dissipating about 25W over its 2.2m length, and thus heated up more than average. My temperature concerns led me to the solution: wrap the strip around some sort of heat-sinking cylinder. The only metal tubing I had lying around was standard copper water pipe…too small a diameter. But…I did have a roll of aluminum foil. Eureka!

I did a dry fit of the strip spiraled around the foil roll. It looked good. So I peeled off the adhesive backing and assembled the pieces.

Even with the heat sink, the whole assembly still got fairly toasty. But that was with the foil roll standing on the floor. Lifting it a bit off the floor got a chimney effect going up inside the roll, which dropped the temperature to something more reasonable.

Using fishing line to suspend the roll. It's also secured by line at the bottom.

All the parts. I’m waiting on a footswitch, which will be installed on the AC cord.

As I've investigated in previous blogs, long LED strips tend to drop voltage the farther you get from the 12V connection point. To minimize this, I soldered the 12V connection to the centre of the spiral.

The 12V PSU is another Chinese special, rated at 5A – over twice the lamp current. It does work up to – and a bit beyond – its rated current, but it gets pretty warm, and the DC wire drops a volt. Practically, I wouldn’t use it for much over 3A.

—Michael Dunn is Editor in Chief at EDN with several decades of electronic design experience in various areas.

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“You could probably install a 12V DC fan as a base so it blow the hot air out of the top, and at the same time provide stability and airflow from the bottom. Just a suggestion. “

“Congrats Michael! Very pretty shade. And the scheme to light it… It is the future of design.nnnSadly.”

“Even with the chimney effect, the thing gets pretty toasty after reaching equilibrium. I could probe it, but my finger guess is maybe 70u00b0! Removing the cardboard core would probably have been a good idea… “

“That's an option, though I'm no fan of fans. It's not as hot as I thought. Fingermometer was uncalibrated u2013 I tried again u2013 it seemed cooler. I measured. Nothing over 59u00b0. Warm, but no panic.”

“I know of a couple of people who have had the same fetish with LED strips and they have really done some pretty amazing things with lighting up their home with it. Throw in the fact that these lights pretty much last forever, you really have a plethora of

“LED is so easy to acquire these days! And I am really not surprised that there are so many DIY projects available online to try out if you would like to spruce up your home! I'd just be careful not to do too many of the projects at once though. Despite th

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