Under Cabiniet Lighting

Our kitchen has a bake center with a bifold sliding door where we keep the blender and toaster. My wife has talked about wanting lighting under that cabinet for quite a while. For mothers day this year I decided to put together something to make this happen.

I didn't want to worry about truning the lights on and off so I decided that attaching a magnetic switch to the door would be the way to go. The problem that I ran into was that the switch was normally closed and would only turn on when the magnet was close. It was going to be easiest for me to install the switch where the magnet would move away when the light turned on. I did some searching on the web and found an interesting solution where I attached a weaker magnet directly to the reed switch which would always keep the light on. Then I installed a stronger magnet on the door that would conteract the affects of the first magnet when it is close. That plan turned out easier said than done though and it took an hour of two of tinkering to get the switch balanced right.

We have been running this solution in the house for a couple of weeks and it has been working really well. It actually works so well that you don't even notice that it's working which I think is one of the best measures of success for a project like this one.

Here are the parts that I used to put this together.

• 24 Volt 3 Amp Power Supply
• SWITCH REED SPST 3A 42-83 A/T
• Magnets
• LED - 3W Aluminum PCB (Warm White)
• FemtoBuck LED Driver