Lighting Decks on Multilevel Layouts, quick thoughts

I noticed that a vendor I've used to make pc boards and fill other electronics needs had a flexible LED strip light available. (Seeedstudio, for reference) I'm been intrigued by the idea of lighting with LED strips versus trying to install tube or compact fluorescent lights under the upper deck.

I've been holding off, as the prices for the stuff available at Lowe's or HD is very very pricey per foot and is pretty limited. There are some internet vendors that are cheaper, but it still adds up when you want something like 50 feet plus of it per string.

This particular choice came as 1 meter of strip, and price was $11, so I felt that it was worth it for an experiment.

The strip has an adhesive backing that is simply peel off. Getting power to the strip is a simple as soldering two wires to pads, that are clearly labled +12V and -.

The following picture shows what you get from a single strip of these.

WOW!  No, my ankle isn't glowing, that is the strip of LEDs going.

Pretty darn impressive for $11. Power draw runs about 38mA per meter, so I'd say that you could power 10M of this off a good 12V 1.5A to 2A supply and still run at well under 50% utilization.

It did get a bit warm, so maybe attaching this to some aluminum C channel would be the ticket. Stay tuned for some more testing.