Multi-zone WiFi LED Lighting (Part 2a – LED Light Strip Diffusers)

Following on from Part 1 of this series on creating a multi-zone LED lighting system, I wanted to share an update on a couple of areas that I couldn’t completely cover due to awaiting delivery of the components. In this part I’ll cover the effect of the LED Light Strip Diffusers, with a subsequent post I’ll cover the WiFi LED Controller final selection. These were going to be a single post, but it ended up getting quite long just on the WiFi controller section, so I thought it best to split it over two posts.

LED Light Strip Diffusers

From the first post you will see that I decided to buy 20m of 9x17m Aluminium Channel Profile from LightingWill through Amazon UK. This came from China, which had the added bonus of needing to pay import duty. Something to be mindful of when ordering and working out costs for the project. The internal dimensions of the profile is perfect for the RGBW strips I purchased, many of the other aluminium extrusions available are narrower which may be fine for RGB strips, but not the wider RGBW ones.

It’s hard to capture the true effect of the diffuser with a camera, but it both cleans up the appearance of the installation along with softening the light significantly.

At high brightness levels you can still see each LED clearly but it is softened significantly compared to the bare LED. I’d definitely recommend using a diffuser where possible for future installations.

Next Up

Part 2b of this series covers the evaluation and selection process for the WiFi LED Controller. Part 3 covers the installation process.