Nifty approach to putting up your own LED awning strip light system

If you've been cruising around in an RV park at night recently, chances are you've seen those nifty looking LED light strips that many are putting under their awnings. These things run out like a long neon tube, but since they're a strip of LEDs, they take little power, and are really durable. Push a button on a remote control and you can change the color of the light to suit any fancy you may have, even set them to blink, alternate colors, and put on your own light show.

We've seen different ways RVers have wired their strips up, as you do have to draw the power for the strip from somewhere. For some, it means dragging a wire inside the RV through some fashion or another, or perhaps into a basement storage compartment, where the power supply can be plugged in.

Along comes a young RVer with a whole different twist on his LED strip set up. Instead of dragging wires hither and thither, he's bypassed using the AC power block (which simply converts shore power to 12-volts d.c.), and pumps the required 12-volts directly to the control unit from his outside "porch" light. By doing so, he has no wires flopping around and blowing in the wind, and when he wants to switch the LED strip off or on, he simply hits the switch inside his coach that would normally operate the porch light.

How'd he do it? Simply put, he took a bulb for the porch light, knocked off the glass, removed the filament, and hooked the power supply wires to the appropriate stubs in the bulb base where the filaments had once been connected. By cutting a small notch in the porch light lens, he then runs the wire that goes from the controller to the LED light strip. Before he replaces the porch light lens, he carefully packs the controller and wires into the light fixture, pointing the UV sensor that "reads" the remote control so that by aiming his remote at the "porch light," he controls the LED strip light system.

Here's a video he's put together to show you how you can do it yourself.



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