in a previous video, we looked at the principle behind connecting
certain types of LED fittings in series now we're at the stage where we need to
connect up our led lights from collingwood as you can see here
and we really don't want to destroy them by connecting them up incorrectly
we also need to make sure that we're using an led driver that can be used in
an outdoor environment and therefore has
the right IP rating now in a previous video, we looked at the
importance of connecting this type of fitting to a constant
current driver in series with each other so if you haven't seen that then please
go and have a look at it as it explains the principles behind this video
in that video it was really easy to connect the fittings in series as all
the conductors could be brought to the same position
and you could clearly see that the fittings were connected in series with
each other but often when you come to do real world
installations things are sometimes a little bit
trickier the principles stay the same but it can be harder to visualize what's
going on with the connections so we're going to do a real installation
using a constant current driver and these series connected fittings so
we've got four of these spike lights that i'm going to install
into this strip of gravel here and then i'm going to angle the heads so that
they sort of illuminate the front area of the lawn
now it's worth noting here that this is not the main source of illumination
for the lawn the idea is that the light from these will just kind of
graze across the lawn and add some texture and detail
to the grass and the lighting scheme now for the purposes of this video i'm just
going to lay the cables out on the surface here
so that we can clearly see where they go and how the fittings connect to each
other realistically i'd probably drill holes
for the cables through the top here and then run them inside this rebated slot
here to keep them out of view so let's apply
some of the basic principles from the previous video
we've got here leds that can run on either a constant current of 350
milliamps or 700 milliamps but i want to use 350 milliamps for the lower light
level using this current each one will
dissipate one watt of power so that's four watts of power in total so i'm
going to need a driver that will alter its voltage to always deliver 350
milliamps of current i've got some different drivers here
from collingwood that i could use so this one is not going to work because
if you look on here you can see this is going to try and deliver 700 milliamps
of current which is not the value i want so that one's out both of these ones
will deliver 350 milliamps so that's great
but this one is designed to deliver one to nine watts of power and this one
one to five watts so either would be fine and i'm happy to fit the smaller
driver now i'm sure that by now you're all
shouting at the screen that this driver is actually not the right choice because
obviously this driver is designed to be used indoors it
wouldn't last long out here with the various external influences it
would be subjected to and that's where these excellent drivers
from collingwood come in they're rated at ip65
and will therefore fit perfectly into this installation
the connections in and out of the drivers are hardwired which means that
you're not going to be able to budget the connections
and compromise the ip rating by the lid not going on correctly
so we've got two examples here of the ip rated driver this one has a constant
current of 700 milliamps which is obviously more than we want to
use in this installation and will produce two brighter light output
but this one has a constant current of 350 milliamps so this is the one to go
with and if we just check the power rating on
here you can see that that can deliver up to nine
watts of power so that more than meets our needs
so let's have a look at the physical installation here i'm going to place the
driver under the decking that's going to live
under there out of sight but for the sake of this video and for the sake of
clarity i'm just going to keep it out here
initially and plunk it down on there now obviously we're going to be
making outdoor connections so we'll have a look at these ip68 rated connectors in
a moment but for the time being let's just
consider the connections themselves now it's possible
using one of these connections here to connect together up to
three led fittings to the driver now if we're just going to connect one it's
really obvious how that's going to work we're just going to connect the positive
from the driver which is this cable here it's just going to go to the positive of
the light fitting and the negatives will also go together
nice and simply so that's not a problem now if you're going to connect two
fittings together that's where it starts to get a little bit different
you need to connect the negative back from fitting number one to the positive
of fitting number two i must admit at this point i find it super helpful just
to label up the fittings with numbers so that i don't lose track of which ones
which so let's just connect these together to demonstrate so we'll put the
positive and the negative from the driver
into these two terminals here so we'll screw those down
and make sure that they've been nicked up nicely
and then we're going to pick up the positive connection
from the driver with the positive connection
from fitting number one so we're going to connect that into there like that
now if this was just one fitting by itself then obviously we'd connect the
two negatives together like so assemble the connector no
problem but what we're going to do here is we're going to move that
across into this connection here instead so we'll just get that put inside this
terminal and then we'll see what happens with our
other connection so if you cast your mind back
to the other video that we made you'll remember that for
the next point we need to pick up the positive
for fitting number two needs to come from the negative
of fitting number one in order for the current to be able to flow through this
in the correct direction so we'll put that in there
like that and then we'll put the negative from fitting number two so
there's fitting number two the negative goes into this end terminal like so
screw that up nice and tight and then what we need to do is put a little link
connection between the end of the circuit which is
fitting number two the negative then needs to go to the negative back to
the driver in this cable here so we'll just put this little link that i've made
up in here like so we pick up the negative from fitting
number two and then that goes off back to the
driver and you can see there that the circuit
will be complete so we'll just get that put in there
screw that down nice and tight
and that is the connection made so you can see the current's going to flow
down the positive to fitting number one through the lamp back down the negative
into the positive of fitting number two through the lamp
and then back down the negative to this point here where it goes back to the
negative of the driver now let's have a look at
what happens if we've got three fittings connected in series
so we'll bring our third fitting in here now so you can see i've labeled this up
again as fitting number three just to help me keep track
of which fitting is which and then it's very simply just a matter
of removing this little link here and we just follow the same logic
that we followed at every step in this procedure which
is that the positive from the new fitting
picks up the negative from the previous one so here we've got the positive
fitting number three that's going to pick up the negative from fitting number
two so we'll connect that in there like that
screw that down nice and tight and then you can see that what happens
is that the negative from fitting number three goes on to the negative
of the driver so you can see there that's a pretty good rule of thumb
just as a guide to help you make sure that you're getting these connections in
the right places that actually the colors from
the first connection to the driver and the last connection to the driver should
be the same so in other words this positive connection should go to a
positive connection on the fitting and this negative connection on the
driver should go to a negative connection
on the fitting also now we've seen a principle to follow when it comes to the
connections and actually they just stay the same when we move to four fittings
but the difference now is that we need an additional connector
as there wouldn't have been enough room in the first one and in reality
if you've got your fittings laid out in a long line like we have here
then you'd need an additional one anyway now colin would have done me a massive
favor by having a generous amount of cable on
each fitting so that i only need to have two connector positions for four
fittings now we just follow the same direction as
before the positive comes from the driver so you can see here here's the
driver and here's our positive connection and
that positive connection is gonna go to the positive of fitting
number one so i'm just going to get these put into
the connectors to start with so we've got those
positioned so we'll get those connected up and then
we'll take it from there so there we go that's our
positive and negative connection from the driver
coming in there so then we'll bring into play
our cable number one so here comes cable number one
and we're going to connect onto that the positive
to the positive from the driver so that just goes in there like that
and then very similar to the setup we had before we're going to put the
negative of fitting number one into that
connector there so there you can see we've got
that set up like that and then we pick up
from the negative of fitting number one we take the
positive of fitting number two so that's going to go
into there like so so we're just going to pick
that up there so we'll put the positive into that terminal
and screw that down and then we'll put the
negative into that terminal and as you can see this is looking remarkably
familiar to what we had before so now we've got
fittings numbers one and two connected now we need to take the electrical
connections on to position number three
and four for those light fittings there so hopefully we know this is going now i
need to pick up the negative connection from fitting number two
i need to take it to the positive connection of fitting number three but
instead of this being connected over here
it's going to be connected over here so what i need to do is to pick up
that negative connection and bring it over here
so what i'm going to do here is i'm going to pick up the negative connection
from light number two
and i'm going to connect it to the positive of the third fitting now don't
be tempted at this stage to use the black in this connecting
cable stick with the red and it'll make far more sense in the moment
if we stick to the pattern we've already used so i've got the positive
effectively of fitting number three and i'm going to take that
down to here and put that into this terminal here so that's just going
to go in there like so just loosen that off
a little bit and get that in there so there we go
i'm just going to leave that other black cable from here disconnected for now
because we'll see the significance of that
in a minute okay so that now becomes the positive connection from fitting
number three so i'm going to put that in there like that
so that is the positive connection to fitting number three now
i'm just slacking that terminal off just a little bit
and get that in there like so then we're back to a similar position
where we were before where now we need to think about what we're going to do
with this one so from this position here we're going to
take the negative connection from fitting number three and hopefully by
this stage we know what we're going to be doing here we're going to connect
that into the positive connection of fitting
number four so that is going to go into there like
so there's the positive connection from
fitting number four so again that probably just needs a
little bit of a loose in there to get that in there we
go
and we'll tighten that up and we'll put the negative
from light number four into that terminal there
and then very similar to what we did when we had just two fittings connected
previously we're now going to put a little link
from the negative of light number four that's
going to go from there
over to there and in there like that and tighten that up and then
look at that we've got a negative connection left over
and that's going to go onto there like that
so we'll connect that in there and just loosen it off just a little bit
make life as easy as we can so we'll push that into there
like that and that gives us our return connection
now so what that then does is
that becomes the negative connection effectively from light fitting number
four and that's going to go back down the
black conductor remember i said earlier it makes sense later
we then connect that returning negative conductor
goes on to the return leg the return negative if you like of
the driver and there it is that's our connections completed
now obviously what we've done here is i've i've kept this as a very short
piece of cable so you can see where the connections are and actually i could
leave it like this because the cables are long enough but in reality you can
make this interconnecting cable longer so that you've got a greater distance
between the two different positions for the
connector blocks so let's just track where the current is
going to go it's going to come from the driver
down the positive cable through the positive connection of fitting
number one pass through the lamp and come back down the negative again
go down the positive of light fitting number two come back down the negative
again and then it's going to track down this
cable onto the positive of fitting number three
go down the positive number three go through the led fitting
back on the negative through the positive of led fitting number four
and then come back down the negative through the link there
and then back to here and back to the driver down the negative there thus
completing the circuit and putting all the lamps connected in series
now if you ever have more than four connections to make you can just
continue with the same principle if you want to add a fifth light
you can remove this link and simply wire it in here and if you're going up to
six then this first connection after the driver would get repeated in this
position and then this connection would get
bumped to the final connection position at a fresh connector
couldn't be simpler now let's have a closer look at one of
these neat little connector blocks here so having made the connections it's just
a matter of enclosing them into these excellent ip68 connector blocks
so the first thing that you need to do is just to crack off these little
spacers that sit on the side here so we'll just remove those while we're
here going to do all four of those and these are just here to
prevent the gel from kind of bonding in the two halves
while the product is in transit so they're gone
and now they'll be able to clamp together all the way
without any issues there so then it's a matter of just removing
these little nibs here and these come out really easily
and just remove the little barriers that correspond
to the cable positions that you're putting in so i'm going to take both out
of this side and then one there so we'll get rid of
those so we'll just remove those off camera
now and as you can see those have been removed
so that these will match up with each other when we put
these together so we've got two from that end
and one from that end so that'll fit in really nicely and seal this up
then we need to pop in these little reducing adapters here because we're
using quite small cables here so we'll snap those off and
just put them in the relative position there
it's really nice and easy because they're kind of molded they've got these
little slots in them that map into
those positions there like that so we'll just put in
three of those on each okay so with those little barriers snapped off
and with the reducing adapters in place it's just a matter
of pressing these connectors into the gel
that's gonna squish around that and hold that in just make sure that
the outer sheath goes all the way into the fitting there and then it's just a
matter of popping that on the top and squeezing it
together and then the little nibs on either side
there's little plastic catches you can see
just squeezing that together that's got that in place and then it's just a
matter of popping in these screws so you can see there's a
recessed part here to pop the screw into and just a matter
of doing it up so we'll crank that one into there and then
because they've made the two halves of this absolutely
identical what then happens is that you have to flip it over
to pop the other one in so we'll flip it over and pop that one in
and that is that now all nice and sealed up i think that
is a really excellent bit of kit i really really like that
ip68 i'm confident that that's completely sealed up you can see where
the gel is kind of squeezed out a little bit there
meaning that there's absolutely no fear of any moisture getting inside there now
i think that's absolutely fantastic so there we go it's now time for my
absolutely favorite part of any electrical job
it's time to power up the lights and see what it looks like so we'll wait till it
gets dark and then we'll turn it all on so there we go using the correct
equipment from collingwood and following the correct installation methods
you'll have an installation that brings light to the garden for years to come
thank you very much for watching