So due to needing to eat outside, I’ve been modifying our landscape lighting to let people safely walk around the house to our backyard in the dark (normally who would be eating on their deck in December when it is super dark by later afternoon, so who would have worried about this). So I installed a bunch of the LED spots to light the path back. The problem I had was that the lights were so glaringly bright. I had one set of older lights that had shades and one new set that was 1/2 the size but just as bright without a shade. So I first found that mounting them higher off the ground made a huge difference in how well they lit the path, which meant my neighbors got a lot of glare. So after 3D printing shades for the lamps which helped a smidge I realized I needed a hex-grid to keep side-glare down. The smallest tilt down eliminates the glare forward, which was perfect.
In hindsight I should have laser cut the grids as the 3D printer didn’t like such thin walls (in fact the slicer threw them away as “noise” until I turned on “detect thin walls”, but they were prone to print failures. The part friction fits on there making a perfect use for 1/4” black acrylic (these lights are small enough to use a lot of scrap black acrylic I have around). It will be way more UV stable vs. the PLA I printed the rest of the stuff with. I do need to make some more, so figure I will do that, since it will also take way, way less time!
I have 3 of those in our fireplace for when we want a fake fire (he summer) I even have eco red fire crackling sounds coming from the Arduino that controls them. They are surrounded by birch logs so it looks fairly convincing…
@henryhbk: I wish I had neighbors like you! Sadly, the typical LED yard light sends glaring white light EVERYWHERE. Me? I like it dark after the sun goes down.
There is a house not far from me which is infamous for it’s christmas light display. To start with the house is built like a literal castle (crenelations and all), and had to have a 400A service dragged into the house to support the lighting. I mean I’m not trying to be scrooge or anything, but if I lived next to a guy that needed 400A220V to support his LED christmas lights, we are gonna have an issue. And somehow the guy put it in the deed that this goes on in perpetuity (not sure if that passes constitutional muster of religeous freedom if the next owner isn’t christian you could compel them to put up christmas lights). It’s blinding to drive by (and it’s a quiet neighborhood too…)