How to Install An On/Off Magnetic Switch for LED Lighting

This video, number 6 in our LEDucation series, is "How to Install a Magnetic On/Off Switch for your LED Lights," and shows you the simple steps for installing a magnetic switch on a door or drawer. The switch is set up so that your LED light fixture will go on when the closet, cabinet or cupboard door is open, and switches off when it's closed. It's one of the handiest LED accessories we sell!

See more LED lights and accessories at www.elementalled.com.

Captions:
Elemental LED presents
How to Install a Magnet On/Off Switch
Bubble: All of the components shown are available at www.elementalled.com
Thanks for watching!
Music by E.M. Hanifa
Bubble: The lyrics are in Tamil, a language of southeastern India.
www.elementalled.com

Transcription:
This is the magnetic on/off switch. As you'll see, it comes in two parts and the two parts face each other and point where the arrows point to. This is the cover of the switch that goes over where the wires make contact.

So the first thing you do is pull the cover off. This is a driver, and you'll see that it has two pairs of wires, a black one which is negative, and the red which is positive. We're not going to use the driver.

We're using an adapter on this installation. That also has a positive and negative wire. So, it's the negative wire of the adapter and the negative of the fixture that are going to be connected through the switch.

First I'm going to attach the adapter wire. Next, we have to figure out which one is positive and which one is negative on the fixture. So we'll just do a little test, and this is safe because it's low voltage. You're not going to get shocked or anything.

All right, there we go. So, we found the negative wire. It's the one touching the switch. So what we'll do is we'll mark that black since that's the color of negative. Then we'll attach that to the switch.

The only thing left to do is to attach the positive wires to each other. So to do that we're going to use this insulated splice connector. What you do is you put one wire in each end of it. That makes the connection. Then to secure it, you just use a pair of pliers and just crimp it down on each end and in the middle. You've got to squeeze really hard.

All right. So there's our secure connection. Let's see if it works, and it does work. As you'll see, when these make contact, it breaks the connection. The second part of the switch can face in any direction towards the other part and it will shut it off, as you can see.

I'm going to install it up in the upper corner of the doorway. Each part of the switch just takes two screws. I measured how far in it is on the door because the frame gets in the way a little bit, so I'm going to put the other part of the switch a half inch in. That is also secured with two screws. Then when I first screwed this in, I didn't tighten it all the way because we needed to put the cover, and that cover's the points of contact on this part of the switch.

I made sure to install the switch so that the connector could reach the light bar. Let's see if it works. It does. Look at that. I'll just grab a T-shirt and voila!

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• magnet switch for leds
• led
• leds
• light
• lights
• lighting
• 12V
• 12
• volt
• DC
• low
• voltage
• accessories
• magnetic
• switch
• cabinet
• door
• drawer
• cupboard
• kitchen
• bathroom
• closet
• install
• installation
• instruction
• instructions
• how
• to
• how-to

[zumogo]

kewl vid. whrere did you got the drill?

[elementalLED]

@zumogo Thanks! You can get the drill at any hardware store.

[R3dDra90n]

Hey This may be weird question, I find this video really helpful, and wnat to do this to a camera case I have, its a big hard case similar to the pelican, and wnat it to light up everytime I open it, so in doing so I need to use batteries, with the same setup you have with magnetic switch maybe just 3 led's, how should I tackle the power source?

[elementalLED]

@R3dDra90n Happy to hear you found it helpful. For the power source you could use the less expensive battery we sell and a clearance 10 inch waterproof light bar and probably an LED Adapter Splice Cable to connect battery cable to magnetic switch. Shoot us an email if you need any more help with your project. We love featuring customer's projects on our site.

[anitabeebe1]

Thank you!! This was really helpful-you are a great teacher-very clear.

[elementalLED]

@anitabeebe1 Glad you found it helpful :)

[elementalLED]

@e4wardTube Why should it be switched?

[elementalLED]

@valleystylez1 A 12V adaptor was used so the lights were not battery operated. The closet shown is bigger than 3' x 3' so the light may be more intense in a smaller one.

[valleystylez1]

So, are these lights battery operated? How bright are they for a 3' x 3' closet?

[elementalLED]

@tranglas - It seems like you could have a two-strand wire going from each switch (left and right) and bundling together where they connect to the power supply (of course keeping all the positives together and all the negatives together) and that would work, right? Let us know how that goes.