Here's my review of the Briksmax BX016 LED light kit for the Lego Downtown Diner

Hey brick fans, welcome back to my blog!  Today I'll be reviewing the Briksmax LED Lighting kit BX016 for the Lego modular Downtown Diner.

Thanks to the very kind folks at Lightailing.com who sent me the lighting kit for this review.

If this is your first time lighting a building block set, you are in for a treat, as a lighting kit will make your Lego set really stand out.   Plus, getting a LED lighting kit is a great value because if you were to buy all the individual components separately, they would cost you a lot more.

With the lighting kits you get from Lightailing or Briksmax, you will get free shipping for orders over $49, and they will replace any missing or faulty items, just contact their customer service team to help you out.

The lighting kits are customised for each particular Lego building block set so for this review we will get all the parts necessary to light up the Downtown Diner modular building and make it look spectacular.

There are two manuals for this kit, a User Guide and Serivce Card.  If you want to see what the Briksmax User guide looks like, you can check it out here on the Briksmax website.

There are 14 bags of different parts for the BX016 light kit.

They include an assortment of light strips, led dot lights, expansion boards and connecting wires.  Also included is a separate streetlamp and USB plug.

You also get a tweezer tool, a battery pack and spare parts using real Lego.

The instructions are very detailed and shows you visually how to connect up the light kit.

First we work on the the pink Cadillac from the Downtown Diner as it gets lit up headlights and taillights.  The wires are mounted under the chassis.

Next we swap out the original streetlamp and put the Briksmax provided lamp in.  It contains an LED light and wire that you connect to the expansion board.  I always test out each lighting component as I install them to make sure there are no defects.

The Jukebox gets two flashing multi-colour lights, a very cool effect!

Following the instructions, I added some strip lighting to the front of the building and some uplighting for the Diner sign.

There's an LED light for the lamp on the back stairwell.

Use some more of the LED strip lights and attach them to the underside of the second floor to light up the interior.

Repeat the process of attaching the LED light strips for the second and third floors of the diner.

Here are some sample pages from the instruction manuals.  As you can see they are not difficult to follow.

Not sure if I placed the led lights in the right location under the Art Deco arch?

There's even a flashing red light that gets added to the rooftop spire.

I'm now on a quest to try to light up all of my modular buildings, because the Briksmax LED light sets work so well.  For comparison purposes, my Town Hall modular is lit up using a kit by LeLightGo and the Palace Cinema uses a light kit from Kyglaring.  You can see that the Briksmax kit for the Downtown Diner is a lot brighter.

If you want your Lego city to have a greater impact, you have to add light kits to all of your buildings, they just make such a big difference!  I'd highly recommend you try out one of the Briksmax light kits for yourself and see how it improves the look of your city.

Feel free to check out all of the unique LED lighting kits at Lightailing.com!  And as a special bonus use my affiliate code ITSNOTLEGO2023 to save an extra 10% on all your purchases.

Hope you found this review helpful, see you in my next blog post!   Bye!

First Project in 2022: Lighting the not Lego Blade Runner Spinner MOC C5177

Hi alt brick fans, hope you are all doing well!  

I've got another project on the table, this time it's lighting this not Lego Blade Runner Spinner MOC C5177.   The lighting I'll be using was generously provided by Lightailing.com.

The Blade Runner Spinner has always been a favourite model of mine, it just looks very futuristic.  The building block set featured is C5177 which you can get off Aliexpress. It's a copy of the Rebrickable version by designer MOMatteo79.

Here are some images of the spinner I found on the internet.  Whenever you see it, the lights are always on, so for my model, I wanted to recreate that effect.

I already have the model of the spinner already, but I didn't want to tear it apart in case my lighting project didn't work out as planned.  I also wanted to keep one around to use as a reference.  

So I bought another one from >Aliexpress .  It comes with seven bags of parts and an instruction manual.

Here's some sample pages from the manual.

These are all the parts for the Blade Runner spinner moc.  I figured it would be an easier task of integrating the lighting as I built the model from scratch, rather than taking apart the old model.

Lightailing.com has lighting kits for almost every Lego set on the market, but they didn't have one for this moc set.  When I inquired about what parts I would need to light the spinner, Lightailing was really helpful and they promptly researched it and came up with everything I would need.  

Here's what Lightailing sent me:  LED lights in various colours, white, blue, red and yellow, expansion boards and connecting cables, two types of power supplies (battery and USB plugs) and a multi-function board that makes the lights blink on and off.  With all these accessories, it would be up to me to figure out how to put everything together and make it work the way I wanted.

Two packs of 15cm white LED lights (3 lights per pack).

Three packs of 15cm blue LED lights (3 lights per pack).

Three packs of 15cm red LED lights (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 15cm yellow LED lights (3 pieces per pack).

One pack of 6 port expansion boards (3 pieces per pack).

One pack of 8 port expansion boards (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 5cm connecting cables (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of 15 cm connecting cables (3 pieces per pack).

Two packs of USB cables (1 piece per pack).

One AAA battery pack and one multi-function board.

The multi-function board is approx 1 inch square and has one input port (power) and two output ports (for alternating the blinking lights).  The black knob is used to control blinking speed and the black lever controls the blink rate.

This was the first test of the led lighting which I attached to the underside of the spinner.

I fed the wires up into the passenger compartment and ran them out the rear of the spinner.

Next step was adding side marker lights and the center head lights.  So there are a total of 6 LED lights at the front of the vehicle. At this point I began to realize that I might need to create a cavity in the trunk of the spinner for all the wiring and expansion boards.

Testing out the flashing rear side marker lights.

Attached a couple more lights underneath, so there are a total of 6 flashing LED lights here.

Here's a close up of the roof lights.  The yellow lights are non blinking, but the center white light and the red and blue lights are blinking.  Seven lights in total on the roof.

Let's see if we can jam all this stuff into the trunk! I have one expansion board for the non blinking front lights, two expansion board for the alternating blinking lights, and one expansion board for the remainder of the non blinking lights in the rear, plus all the connecting cables.

Tried to tidy up all the wiring.  Here's a video I posted on Youtube.

 

Another Youtube video I made.

All of the LED lighting used was from the brand BriksMax, which you can get at Lightailing.com.  Unlike some other branded kits where they have a USB plug on every light, the Lightailing ones plug into an expansion board, which makes it really easy to chain lights together like I did in this model.  I found the LED lights, cables and expansion boards very easy to use and they were very high quality.  

For my spinner, I have a choice of power supply options, I can either use the the USB connector which you can plug into an optional USB hub, or you can use the battery pack if you don't have a USB power source nearby.  Please leave your comments or questions below!   Bye for now!

Installing Briksmax Light kit into my modular building (Part 2)

Hello brick fans!   Welcome back to bricksandfigs.blogspot.com!

This is the second part of this series on how to install the Briksmax LED light kit into my modular building.  In my previous post, we had wired up the first floor of my Detective's Office and got it lit.   

We encountered some defective parts, which were quickly replaced by Lightailing.com.   I was surprised at how responsive they were and how fast they shipped out the replacement parts.

Here's the replacement parts complete with a little Captain America minifigure as a gift.

Let's start with a recap of what's lit up already.

The first floor (previewed in my previous blog post) ...

Here are the street lamp, barber pole and lighting above the sign (that's actually part of the second floor).  The street lamp comes wired up as one piece, whereas the barber pole consists of three individual LED lights.  

 

It takes a bit of work to secure the barber pole lighting and wires but the end result is worth it.  Al's barber shop is nice and bright too, so customers can appreciate Al's hair cutting talents.   The interior light is supplied by a very bright LED light strip.

The pool hall outside canopies are lit up by 2 LED lights, and the interior uses another bright LED light strip.

Even the entranceway between the barber shop and pool hall is lit up.  No dark alleyways here.  See how bright this LED light strip is?

Let's move onto the second floor now.

The most prominent feature of the Detectives Office is the big POOL sign.  You can see that it is lit up on both sides.

This is perhaps the trickiest part of installing the LED lights, because you have a total of 8 LED lights and wires feeding into the edge of the window.  If the Briksmax light kit came with blinking LEDs on the POOL sign, it would make it even cooler, I think!

In my modular building, the Detective's Office has vacated, hence the removal of the furniture inside.  I plan on relocating the contents of the office into a larger modular MOC that I'm working on.  But you can see that the second floor is lit up nicely by two more LED light strips.

There's still lots of the light emanating from the windows at the rear of the building. I'll explain a little later why there is an expansion board out back.

The third floor is actually lit up from underneath the roof top, hence no wiring was needed here.  I also relocated one of the light fixtures, which you will see in the next picture.

And top floor is lit up courtesy of another light strip.  Here is how it looks all lit up from the rear.

The Detectives Office modular building all lit up!  Normally, this is where most LED light kit reviews would end, but here at bricksandfigs.blogspot.com, you always get a few more details and pictures about my builds and modifications.  

Disclaimer:  This is where my modifications deviate from the instructions supplied by Briksmax.  I'll explain why as I go.

Third Floor mods

We will start from the rooftop and make our way back down.  Here's how I lit up the third floor.   The LED light strip is attached to the underside of the rooftop.  The LED light over the doorway is attached to the light strip and loose wiring is secured by a random 1x2 brick part.  The cable that supplies the power for third floor lighting is attached to the other end of the light strip.  

Here is my deviation.  Below is the picture of the original Detective's Office.  Notice the location of the lamp.

To me, it makes more sense to have a light fixture over the door than to have it over the window.  It also makes it easier to light the third floor since all the wires are consolidated to under the rooftop. 

The rooftop and third floor can be separated easily from the rest of the modular building now.  No wiring is necessary for the third floor as a result.  A reminder that this is what I did, but the Briksmax instructions will work as well.

Second Floor mods

Here is how I have wired up the second floor.  Again a major deviation on my part from the Briksmax provided instructions.  Most lighting suppliers will attach the LED light strips directly to the underside of the floor above.  I decided early on, that I wanted all lighting to be contained to its respective floor.   

You may or may not notice, that I actually raised the height of this floor by one layer of bricks.  Can you see it?  Here's a picture of the original Detective's Office for reference.

image source: brickset flickr page

Basically, I disassembled the second floor and rebuilt it by adding an extra row of bricks to the second floor.  This gave me the headroom to install a crossbeam to which I could attach each light strip.

I had to source some spare parts from my brick stash to find matching colours for each section, like baby blue for the washroom and brown and nougat coloured parts for the detective's office.

And Finally, the first floor mods

The first floor has sufficient headroom to support another beam I made that spans the width of each section, ie the pool hall, the barber shop and the alleyway.

The modifications I made make it simpler to test the lighting of each floor without requiring the other floors to be attached.

Here is how my modifications all come together.  I have a separate cable that extends from each floor to connect to a six port expansion board.  Theoretically, you could attach the expansion board to one of the floors with the Briksmax provided adhesive strips but I chose to leave it hanging freely at the back.  If I need to detach a floor from the modular building, I simply disconnect the wire from the board, and it's done.

A reminder that the expansion board can then be attached to either a battery pack or USB cable (both parts supplied in the Briksmax kit).

In Summary

My intention is to make the lighting that I install into my buildings as modular as the building itself.  Hence, the goal is to make it easy to separate each floor of the modular building.  

If you are an experienced builder and have spare bricks that you can use,  you can try to make your lighting as modular as your buildings, otherwise I would recommend that you simply follow the detailed instructions provided by Briksmax.  Either way, the result of the lighting in your modular building will look fantastic.

Again, a big thank you to the kind people at Lightailing.com for sending me this Briksmax kit to evaluate.   Please be sure to check out all their other Lego lighting offerings.   If you buy anything from Lightailing.com using the links provided in this post, I will receive a small commission, which will help me to buy more light kits from them, so thanks in advance!   Thanks for reading and Bye for now!