Time to LED the way

In a recent post, we talked about all of the unexpected health benefits you can get from adding LED lights to your gaming setup. But in the few months since we made that post, we realized that we completely left out any information about what else you can do with them.

Most LED Light strips you can purchase have a very sticky 3M adhesive on the back. Which makes them pretty hard to reapply to somewhere else if you end up being unhappy with where you put them originally. So we decided to do some testing and figure out a few pretty solid ways to use our gaming lights so maybe you'll have a few more ideas on your mind in case your first idea just doesn't cut it.

The USB Battery Hack

A little known fact about gaming lights is that they can be portable if you have the right tech to go along with them. They benefit from drawing the power they need from a USB. So all you really need is a USB battery bank and you've unlocked the ability to free your gaming lights from being near a console, pc, or wall outlet.

Battery banks come a dime a dozen these days. In our tests we didn't even need to go out and buy one. Plenty of people in our office just had them lying around. So if you're planning on putting your gaming lights in any obscure places, a USB battery bank is the key.

Stairwell nightlight

Sometimes when you get up in the middle of the night for a glass of water (or because you can't sleep without completing the next Red Dead Mission), it's dark. Yet out of fear of temporarily blinding yourself by turning on the actual lights, you decide to brave the darkness only to find out that your roommate dropped a thumbtack on the ground (for some reason). Next thing you know, you're wondering if you need a tetanus shot and regretting not turning the lights on anymore. That sucks.

But not anymore! All you have to do is glue some gaming lights to the bottom of the railing on your stairs and voila! you have a great, functional, and mood-setting night light.

Festival/Convention Backpack

Gaming conventions and music festivals are always a good time, and most of us bring bags to hold our belongings while we walk the show floor or rock out to our favorite musical act. Convention centers can sometimes be dark; especially if you're at a panel or conference that uses stage lighting.

Sometimes hard to reach items can get lost in the maelstrom of tangled headphones and after dinner mint wrappers and it would be nice to just shed a little bit of light on the situation. So we came up with the idea of lining the inside of a backpack with gaming lights to provide a useful lighting system and keep you from rummaging around.

They also just look cool if you keep them on all the time and walk the show floor. We have no doubt that the LED x Backpack combo would be a showstopper.

Nintendo Switch Dock

The Nintendo Switch dock is really the only console we recommend attaching gaming lights directly to. One single LED strip fits pretty snugly on the back cover that protect the i/o slots. Then, no need for the USB bank since the dock already comes standard with three USB 3.0 ports.

Raspberry Pi Project

If you're an amateur programmer, or you've been looking into picking up homebrew tech gadgets as a hobby, then we're happy to say that Gaming Lights are able to be controlled via Raspberry Pi!

Our LED strips make for a pretty versatile tool for whatever home project you're working on in your free time. If you're willing to ditch the inline controller in favor of coding programs that control the lights over wifi or make them pulsate to music then be our guest! Just know that we have a 30 day warranty in case something breaks.

Quite honestly, this idea deserves a whole blog post of its very own. There are so many things you can do when hooking our lights up to a Raspberry Pi.

In case you want to pick up your very own set of gaming lights, we've linked them at the bottom of the page! Do you have any ideas of your own for gaming lights? We want to hear them! Be sure to let us know and post a picture in our snazzy new comment section below!