Safe to use 12V LED strip lights in children's dolls house?

Community Projects
1

Hi,

I’m planning to add lighting to my daughters’ dolls house, cutting up a 5m LED strip, and adding sections to each room of the house.

I would appreciate experienced opinions about whether this would be considered safe, in particular:

  • risk of electrical shock. e.g. If a 3 year old child touched the LED strip, the little + and - terminals are exposed and I guess could be shorted by a finger. (It has no obvious effect when I touch them).

  • risk of fire. This type of LED strip is low heat so I don’t think there is risk here.

  • any thing else to consider?

In particular, I have purchased this LED strip http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00HSF64JG/r … 71_TE_item. The entire strip requires a 3A adapter and I am planning to use only half of the strip, and with this 12V 2A DC wall adapter http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00BXUT88G/r … 31_TE_dp_2, well within capacity.

I would wire sections of the strips in each room, in parallel, each with their own on-off switch on the + side of the strips http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B008ZYFGGQ/r … 31_TE_dp_6.

The lights would be hidden, on ledges facing backwards (away from where kids sit), but could be touched by a finger reaching around.

All the wiring (apart from connections to strips) would be at back of house which I would cover so can’t be touched. I would solder and tape all connections. There would be one wire coming out which would plug into the adapter which would be plugged into wall. The lights would be used for an hour or two at a stretch, and switched off at wall when not being used.

I’ve read lots of sites, some suggesting 12V DC is safe, others being a little ambiguous, so would appreciate other opinions since my kids are involved!

Many thanks in advance.

2

12V is safe to touch. I would install an appropriately rated fuse between the power supply and everything else. That would protect against fire risk if something more conductive than a finger shorted the connections.

3

What he ^^^ said. Be sure to cut the strips in the right places (every 3’rd LED).

4

Hi, many thanks for the feedback. Very good idea about fuse, will do that. And, yep, will cut strip in right places.

Best regards.

5

Darrel are we neighbors?

CuriousMonk are you in the UK?

Curious Said:

  • Risk of electrical shock. e.g. If a 3 year old child touched the LED strip, the little + and - terminals are exposed and I guess could be shorted by a finger. (It has no obvious effect when I touch them).

- The shock hazard would be from a wall-wart that has leakage from the 240v side to the 12v side. This is where using a power supply with a three prong ground-pin comes in handy. The secondary could be earth grounded naturally instead of through the fingers if such an event arose.

  • Risk of fire. This type of LED strip is low heat so I don’t think there is risk here. Any thing else to consider?

- Any power supply or wall-wart that is certified or lab approved like UL is going to have built in fuse protection, quite often the thermal type tripping at a certain core temperature. Most likely this will be non-resettable.

Christopher

6

Hmmm.

I just bought an el-cheapo wall-wart “for LED” from Amazon (url in original post). It does have a ‘Certificate of EMC Compliance’ on the Amazon site, including a list of standards, and has the German GS logo on back.

Hopefully that is good enough, or should I consider the specs of wall-warts in the future more carefully…?

7

If 2 amps works for you then this might have been better as it has the earth ground.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/New-100-240V-Po … AN4XE99RG4

I would measure the sleeve continuity on the plug to the ground-pin to make sure it is directly earth grounded.

As a kid barefooted I got dropped to the floor putting my hand around a large soldering iron to see if it was getting warm, that was 120v, in the UK you have 240v. :naughty:

Some things are too inexpensive to return, that is why I have boxes with $1,000’s of unused components. I might be a parts hoarder?

Christopher

8

I am not very familiar but if you chose a weather/water proof strip, with an IP rating 65 or 66, wouldn’t the risk of and ability to touch the electrical contacts be greatly reduced? In the waterproof versions aren’t they covered?

9

I am not very familiar but if you chose a weather/water proof strip, with an IP rating 65 or 66, wouldn’t the risk of and ability to touch the electrical contacts be greatly reduced? In the waterproof versions aren’t they covered?

Actually, I did originally consider that, but read some reports that the waterproof ones got hotter (and in some cases needed a heat sink), and also that the water proof coating had discoloured (due to the heat). I thought the uncovered ones would dissipate the heat better.

But perhaps that was a bad call and should have just looked for better quality water proof strips…? :?

10

oldtemecula:
If 2 amps works for you then this might have been better as it has the earth ground.

Christopher

Thanks for suggestion. I’ll definitely look out for 3 pin wall warts in future. (Though it seems that particular one gets some pretty negative reviews!)