Brickstuff TREE01 User manual

Lighting and Automation System
www.brickstuff.com ● Visit http://bit.ly/brickguides for expanded guides, idea books, and usage tips
INSTRUCTIONS FOR USE
WARNING: This product contains small parts and sharp parts. This product is
not a toy. It is not intended for children under 13 years of age.
Welcome, and Thank You!
Thank you for purchasing this Brickstuff product. We hope you enjoy using it as much as we en-
joyed creating it. The parts in this box are only part of our story, only part of what we’re working
hard to develop. Our goal is to create the most flexible and exciting line of hobby lighting and
automation products for you to use in all of your fantastic creations. All of these products will
work together, and you won’t need to be an electronics expert to use them. So keep building
amazing things—we’ll help you bring them to life.
Thanks again for supporting us. We couldn’t do this without you!
--- The Brickstuff Team
[email protected]
2-LED Light Strip Starter Kit
Carefully remove all parts from the included re-sealable anti-static bag:
 Nine 2-light LED strips with adhesive backing
 Eleven black connecting cables
 Three adapter boards
 LEGO® plates for mounting in a LEGO® creation
Depending on the specific kit purchased, there may also be a power supply in the box, or you may
have purchased a kit without a power supply.
DECIDE:
How will you be using the light strips? If you will be
using the adhesive backing to mount the strips, make
sure you have all parts collected and ready before
peeling the adhesive. When using the self-adhesive
backing to mount light strips, try to mount in a perma-
nent configuration (where the light strip won’t be re-
moved and re-attached multiple times). If mounting
in a LEGO® model, mount the light strip to a 1x6 plate
(included) and then move the plate, not the light strip,
if necessary to reposition.
CONNECT:
Connect the strips end-to-end using the included black cables. Be careful when disconnecting
light strips not to pull using the cable (this will damage the cable)—disconnect the light strip by
holding the cable connector firmly and pulling. You can use the included 1x2 black LEGO® plates
to hold slack in connecting cables by winding extra cable around the black plates, then snapping
the black plates onto a ceiling in a building.
When mounting the light strips, mount in such a manner as to remove stress from the connecting
cables at the point they plug into the light strip. This will prevent cables pulling out over time.
Attaching Light Strip to a 1x6 LEGO Plate
for easy repositioning.

TREE01 Product Guide v3.0, March 2015.
Brickstuff, QuicKit, and the Lighting Gear Logo are trademarks of Enthusiast Enterprises, LLC.
This product is subject to the warranty and liability policy set forth in the Warranty section of our website, www.brickstuff.com.
LEGO® is a trademark of the LEGO Group of companies which does not sponsor, authorize or endorse any Brickstuff product or service. The LEGO
Group is not liable for any loss, injury, or damage arising from the use or misuse of this product.
If using a large number of light strips in a row (connected end to end), if the lights toward the end of the chain appear
dim, consider re-working your installation to use multiple, shorter cable runs. Check our website for a growing assort-
ment of adapter boards and varying lengths of connecting cables to customize for your specific installation.
Do not force cable connectors into the light strip jacks— doing so will damage the connectors. Cables have notched
connectors that will only fit into the light strips when inserted in the proper orientation (see Figure 1). Be careful
when disconnecting light strips not to pull using the cable (this will damage the cable)—disconnect the light strip by
pinching the cable connector firmly and pulling. See Figures 2 and 3 below.
Figure 1: Orientation of the Light
Strip Connecting Cable.
USAGE TIPS
Figure 2: The Right Way to
Disconnect a Cable.
Figure 3: The Wrong Way to
Disconnect a Cable!
When thinking about how to install the light strips into a given building, there are two primary arrangements: the Home-
Run wiring method and the Daisy-Chain wiring method. Both are illustrated below.
Daisy-Chain Method
With the Daisy-Chain method of wiring, light strips are
connected primarily to each other in a string from the
bottom of a building to the top. Additional lights or
offshoots from light strings (such as Pico LED Light
Boards or Lighting Effect Controllers) are connected
along the string of lights. This method has the ad-
vantage of using fewer parts, but you may notice that
lights toward the end of the string become dim.
Home-Run Method
With the Home-Run method of wiring, more parts and
cables are used, but each floor of a building has its own
direct feed back to the power supply. This means that
lights will appear bright even at the end of a string of con-
nected lights.
This is also a good method for connecting multiple lit
buildings to a single power source (each “floor” in the dia-
gram above could be a stand-alone building).