How to install a Briksmax light kit into your Modular Building (step by step)

Hello and welcome/welcome back to Bricks and Figs, my little place on the Internet where I showcase my  Lego and alt Lego creations.  I also do reviews of new alt Lego sets on my other blog It's Not Lego.  Please feel free to check it out if you get a chance.

Today, I'll be looking at how to install a Briksmax lighting kit into a Lego or alt Lego modular building.  I'll be using my Detective's Office modular building, but these procedures could apply to any modular building you have.  So let's get started!

Full disclosure:  While Lightailing.com was kind enough to send me this kit to review, I've endeavoured to provide an honest evaluation and unbiased opinion of the product.   

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For all my blog readers, you can get 20% off all led light kits until the end of December 2021 by using code at checkout:  itsnotlego20

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Unpack the Contents of Your Kit!

If you have already received your Briksmax Light kit, unpack the box and make sure you have received everything in the kit.  The kit may include power supplies, such as USB plugs and/or battery packs, LED light strips and bulbs, expansion boards and connecting wires.  There should also be a user guide, instruction manual and service card.  I did an unboxing of my LED light kit in my previous blog post which you can find here.

Study the User Guide and Instruction Manual!

The idea is that you want to familiarise yourself with the process and understand what needs to be done before you start.  The instruction manual provides a lot of pictures but it can still be daunting if this is your first time to assemble a light kit, as it was with me.   

The manual shows you which led light bulbs or strips to use.  Be careful as there are different styles of light (warm and bright) and different lengths of cables attached to the the lights.  The manual also depicts what parts of the modular building will need to be disassembled in order to install the lighting pieces. 

Anyways, I must have gone over the instructions at least two to three times, to fully understand the task at hand.

Test Everything!

 

These LED lights are very delicate so I strongly recommend that you test each part of the kit to make sure there are no defects. I encountered a problem with the USB plug and also an expansion board port problem not responding.  

How to Test?

Initially, at a minimum you will require 3 components to test the lights and accessories in the kit.   You will need a power source (ie. battery pack or usb plug), an expansion board, and an LED light.   

Testing from the battery pack

First make sure you have fresh batteries for your battery pack.  Mine takes 3 AA batteries, but your pack may differ.  Insert the batteries into your pack and turn on the power switch.  Take any one of the LED lights in your kit and plug it into the expansion board via the attached connecting wire, as per the user guide.  Then take the connecting wire from the battery pack and plug it into the same expansion board.  You should see that the selected LED light comes on.  If not, check your connections, try a different led light or different port on the expansion board.  Contact the Lightailing.com service number or email for more assistance.

Test each light and expansion board

If you successfully connected the light and it comes on, continue to plug in different led lights to each port on the same expansion board.  This effectively tests all the lights and ports on the selected expansion board.  Repeat this test with every light in the kit, then repeat the process using each expansion board, making sure you test every port of each board.   

Testing from the USB plug

If your kit includes a USB plug, repeat the above tests but replace the battery pack with the USB plug.  The plug will have a connecting wire which you attach to the expansion board.  Plug the USB connector to your own USB power source such as a USB hub or power bank.   If you successfully verified that all of your lights and expansion boards are working, this test simply swaps out the battery for the USB plug and therefore your expected results should be the same.

Troubleshooting problems

During my testing, I encountered a problem when attaching an LED light to a specific port on one of the expansion boards.  All the attached lights would turn off, when I tried to plug in a light to a specific port.  Normally I would just expect that the LED light was bad and not turn on, but in this case, the actual port was bad.  

Another problem I encountered in my kit was that the USB plug did not work, so for the time being I have to rely on only my battery pack to power the LED lights.  These were the problems I encountered with my own kit, but you may or may not have any issues with your kit.

Contacting Service

Do reach out to Lightailing.com support for assistance if you encounter problems, as I did.  They will ask you to document the problem with either photos or videos so that they can assess.  Afterwards, they should be able to resolve it or send you replacement parts.  At the time of writing this blog post, I'm awaiting the parts that Lightailing.com sent out to me.

Assuming you didn't have any issues with your lights, let's move on to the next step!

Taking Apart Your Modular Building!

As per the instruction manual, you have to remove or replace parts of your modular building to install the LED lights.  Make sure you have your original modular building instructions close by, in case you forget how to re-attach the different parts.

This was probably the most stressful part of the process for me, because it means tearing down parts of my modular building.  If you don't do this often, it's a daunting task, but know that the end result is so worth it.  The instruction manual is pretty good in most places but you will have to finesse the wire placement and where to attach the expansion boards.  All the wiring makes the interior kind of messy, but when viewed from outside, your modular building will look amazing.

Light It Up!

So here is the first floor of my Detective's office wired up.   What do you think?

There are lights under the canopies of the pool hall.  The interior of the pool hall is also lit up as is the adjacent pedestrian tunnel.

Here's Al's barber shop with interior lighting and the barber pole lit up.   Not gonna lie, trying to squeeze the led lights into the barber pole was a nightmare, and I still think the wiring placement can be improved, which I might return to at a later date.

The street lamp on the sidewalk is also lit up.

Don't be alarmed about why my Detective's Office looks different than yours.  I made some minor customisations awhile back (I actually borrowed the windows for another modular MOC I was working on).  But anyways, you can see the back of the building is lit up just as nicely as the front.

I just finished lighting up the first floor of the Detective's Office, so I've still got the second floor interior to do plus the POOL sign.  I'll do another blog post after I've wrapped everything up, so please be sure to come back when I'm done to see the final result.   Hopefully the replacement parts get shipped out to me soon!

In the meantime head on over to Lightailing.com, if you want to check out all of their different LED light kits.  They make all sorts of kits for pretty much every Lego set, not just modular buildings.   

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BTW, use special code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout to get an extra discount off your purchases!  

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That's a wrap for this blog post.  Don't worry, there will be a part two once I finish wiring up the rest of the Detective's Office to show you the completed and lit modular.   Thanks for looking!

Briksmax BX036 Lighting Kit for the Detective's Office Modular (Lego 10246 / Lepin 15011) Unboxing

Hey brick fans, welcome back to my small blog about Lego style bricks and  minifigures!  As you might know, I'm an avid collector of modular buildings such as the Green Grocer and Corner Cafe.  Some of my modular buildings such as the Detective's Office don't get a lot of screen time on my blogs, so I wanted to give it a little more exposure.   I found the picture above on the internet and so I want to light mine up in the same fashion.

See bottom of this post for a special offer!

I came across this website called Lightailing.com and found that they have a huge selection of lighting kits for all different Lego sets.  I actually found that they carry two different lighting kits for the Detective's Office.  They have their own branded one and another by Briksmax.  One of my requirements is that the lights can be powered by either batteries or via USB.  The Briksmax lighting kit satisfied my requirements in that regard.

It took just under 2 weeks for my lighting kit order to arrive from Lightailing.  So in this post, I'll be unboxing and reviewing the contents of what you get in a Briksmax lighting kit.   I couldn't find many reviews, so I decided to make my own.  

In my next post, I'll document and followup on whether the light kit is easy to install into my Detective's Office modular building.  

So let's get this kit unboxed and check out what's inside ...

The lighting kit comes packaged nicely in this box.  Very professional looking with the Briksmax logo and a picture of what the LED lighting kit is for, in this case it is set BX036 for the Detective's Office Lego 10246.

Here's the back of the box with their handy Service information and all of their social media accounts.

Unboxing the Briksmax Lighting Kit BX036

Contents of the Lighting Kit, some booklets and many small packets.

Service Card

How to reach Briksmax for support.

User Guide

Multilingual tips on how to use the light strips.

36 Page Instruction Manual

Here's a sample page from the Instruction Manual.  On initial glance, the instruction manual looks to have lots of pictures showing you how to take apart the Detective's Office in order to integrate the LED lighting into it.

Parts to Replace Pool Sign and Barber's Pole (uses genuine Lego parts, even!)

A02 15cm White Dot Lights (presuming these lights are for the Pool sign)

A03 30cm Warm White Dot Lights (maybe used for the lights on the building?)

A04 15cm Warm White Dot Lights

B01 White Strip Lights (interior room lighting?)

C02 Warm White Street Light (replacement light post)

D01 6 Port Expansion boards.

D02 8 Port Expansion Boards

D03 12 Port Expansion Boards

D04 5cm Connecting Cables

D05 15cm Connecting Cables

D09 Adhesive strips and USB plug.  Hopefully the USB plug is long enough for me to plug into my existing USB hub.

E02 AA Battery Holder (glad it's AA and not AAA)

Wow, I wasn't expecting there to be so many parts to the lighting kit.  Stay tuned for my next post where I will try to integrate the Briksmax kit into my Detective's Office.     

If you are in the market for a LED lighting kit, please be sure to check out their huge inventory of light kits and use my ITSNOTLEGO discount code at checkout time.  Be sure to check back on my next blog post to hopefully see my Detective's Office lit up!   Bye for now!

Check out this new exclusive set by Pantasy brand - Sherlock Holmes apartment at 221B Baker Street.

Hey alt brick fans!  Welcome back to brickandfigs.blogspot.com !  Just wanted to share some pics of the newest Pantasy brand set, it's the Sherlock Holmes Apartment, set number is 86218.  Pictured above is the boxed set.  

use discount code ITSNOTLEGO at checkout!

  This set depicts the residence of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes which is located at 221B Baker Street in London England.

I found this plaque on the wikipedia page for 221B Baker Street.

There are four minifigures that come with this set, Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, the landlady Mrs. Hudson and I can only surmise that the other minifigure is the criminal mastermind Professor James Moriarty.

The set features three different rooms.  The first room is the kitchen where Mrs. Hudson prepares the daily tea she serves to Sherlock Holmes.   Here we see a well stocked kitchen with sand green walls, dark tiles on the floor, a large dining table and two chairs and curtains over the window.  On the table is an assortment of bottles and jars including a microscope.   The kitchen has lots of cupboard storage above the sink and counter.  There's even a single burner stove with a range hood and pot.  I really like all the different canisters of tea along the top of the cupboard.  I hope those are all printed pieces. 

The second room is the sitting room where Sherlock and Dr Watson make their deductions and solve the mysteries.  This room has burgundy coloured walls and hardwood floors.  In the sitting room, there's a fireplace with an assortment of nick knacks on the mantle and a big area rug under the two comfortable armchairs.  I'm very curious about what's in the closet next to the fireplace.   Other fun accessories include a table and chess set, a stand for sheet music, an old style rotary phone, a coat rack, book shelf and end tables.  Lots of old letters and newspapers litter the floor.

I'm not sure if the third room is a continuation of the sitting room or represents an entirely different room.  Given that the walls and floor match the sitting room, I'm going to guess that this is just an extension of the sitting room.  In this room, there's a big orange sofa (reminds me of the sofa in the Friends Central Perk set).  There's a hutch and desk with typewriter and chair.  More letters and newspapers on the floor.  The most interesting set piece is the deer head with the large antlers. 

This is a set I would love to get and then incorporate into one of my existing modular buildings.  I found this picture of the 221B Baker Street.

Coincidentally, the front facade of the Sherlock Holmes museum looks similar to the Juhang Garden Street modular building I just finished building.   I'm sure it would look awesome if I made some minor changes to the building and merged the two sets.

Let me know what you think of this exclusive set by Pantasy .

That's it for now, see you in my next post!