Ballin led tutu plan needs some help

You can rip them out of cables too. The ones in the power supplies are probably bigger and better though and easier to wrap more turns of wire on.

I just grabbed a PSU for $10 at a local shop. It contained 4 ferrites, including a nice big 32mm diameter ferrite--probably the same as the second ferrite listed above. I may not even need to rewind them. Nice assortment of heatsinks and other goodies too.

It's a nice way to go if you can find one.

I just grabbed a PSU for $10 at a local shop.

Click to expand...

I get more than I could ever want for free (well, non-functioning ones) from local repair shops.
Apparently the PSU is the most often replaced PC part.

While all if that is great, I don't think I have enough time to receive the parts in the mail and this is again a small town with very limited retail stores.
I have to have it completely ready by the 7th.

Unless all the parts are in ordinary household electronics. And even then I may not have them on hand.

What about 9v batteries?

Forget 9V batteries, they don't last at all.

Just do the thing with strips of 4 LEDs each, powered by 8x AA batteries, wiring your battery
holders in series.
That means connecting the + lead of one to the - lead of the other.
Then use the "dangling", leftover + and - leads to power your LED strips.
This way you will get 12V from 8 standard AAs, enough to light up the strips of 4 LEDs.

Alright. And the fewer strips of leds the longer the batteries last?

And I'm finding out that I'm terrible at soldering. Like horrible.

I'm using 18g speaker wire and I'm afraid that because it is multiple strands of copper it's not going to get a good connection. I couldn't find anything smaller in stores around here.

Yup, the 8 AAs would probably be your best bet at this point.

That 18-gauge speaker wire is probably a bit too thick for your LEDs. If you have any ethernet cables, each one has eight 24-gauge wires; they're bundled in pairs, which can be convenient for keeping them together until their destinations where you connect them up. If you can't find any around the house, you can buy them at any store that sells electronics/computers (office supplies stores, department stores, Walmarts, etc.).

Oh yeah, with soldering, try making sure that the wires are mechanically attached (i.e. twisted up) before soldering so that they're already relatively secure. Then all the solder has to do is fill in the gaps and hold it in place. Here are some examples.

If you're stuck with 18-gauge wire, just bend both wires into a hook shape and solder them together that way. You can also just let the LED lead the bending rather than the 18-gauge wire. Finally, remember to twist up those strands to keep them together, and you don't need to only have a short bit of exposed wire; you can always snip off whatever is left.

That link was wonderfully informative on soldering.

I'm going to recalculate how much wire I need now that I'm using different tutu and different schematic and fewer leds.

Other source for thin wires, can be old "porters" cables (citophones), or also, old parallel cables (if you get an old parallel cable as scrap, they usually are 2 meters or more, and have 20 or 25 wires AWG24 or AWG28 size) ..... they also have different colors, but usually there are always some white or very clear colors that can confuse with the white tulle and be less visible.

Honestly I've been working really hard on this today and I think that the wire I have is ok.
I did my test with 8x2 and it was fine. I'm already putting it all together. As far as wiring goes I'm about a quarter done.
When I am done, which will probably be a few days due to working and camping, I'll post pics.

This is with half the leds. It's awesome. I'll be putting the rest in later this week.
Thank you everyone who helped me make this. You guys are excellent. I would not have been able to do this on my own or with the help of my idiot friends.

Thank you thank you thank you a million times thank you.