Search

Summary: Work in small sections, watch alignment, and check every run before moving the ladder.

The vast majority of what you need to know about installing puck tracks is covered in the “Before you install anything” section and on the “Lights” page in the “Installation” section.

This page primarily has tips and tricks for troubleshooting issues related to the puck tracks.

Install Info

Installing the LED Pucks

In short: the pucks just snap in to the puck track (foreshadowing: except when they don’t…). No screws, no glue, no magic.

Each puck is held in by four small clips that get pushed through the puck track from the inside out.

Closeup of the clips

You’ll feel and hear a solid snap when it seats correctly. Once installed, they’re extremely secure and can’t be removed without pushing in the clips.

Puck Direction Matters

If you’ve used digital LEDs at all before then you’ll know this already, but the direction you’re running everything does matter. If you look closely at the pucks you’ll see arrows. That arrow should be pointed towards the end of the string. Meaning it should point away from the start of the segment.

Notice the 3 arrows printed on the puck

Creating a Wire Exit For Corner Tracks

If you do butt joints in corners like I did then you’ll need a way to route the wire through the side of the puck track.

Wire running between corner tracks

It was hard to decide if this should be in here, in wiring-the-lights, or one of the other places it could fit. I settled on putting it here, but referencing it elsewhere.

On the side of the corner where the wire needs to exit:

1. Mark on the side where the next trap will meet up
2. Use an end cap as a template to find the center and know where to drill
   • Make sure you’re doing this on the side closet to where it clips in to the base track.
3. Drill a pilot with a 3/16 inch bit
4. Open it up with a step bit to whatever size you need for your wire
5. Use cutters to complete the cuts to turn it in to a slot
   • 

     Completed slot cut
     
6. Chamfer tool thing (that’s the wrong name)

Tools I used

This gives you a path to feed the cable out and into the next track without pinching it when the puck track snaps on.

Tips

Removing a Puck (When You Inevitably Need To)

If you need to remove a puck after it’s installed in the puck track:

1. Apply light pressure to the top of the puck
2. Use a small flathead screwdriver to push the clips in one at a time from the outside of the track
   • The light pressure you’re applying will keep each clip recessed a bit while you work your way around the puck
3. After you’ve pushed the 3rd (of 4) clips in, it will pop free

Don’t Pre-Install All Your Pucks

When you’re looking at a big pile of LEDs and puck tracks, it’s very tempting to sit there and snap all the pucks in. Partially because it feels like you’ll be saving yourself time later, but also because they kind of feel like popping giant bubble wrap and that’s literally always fun. But in this case I recommend not doing it until you’re actually installing that track.

There’s a few different reasons why…

• You’ll go to install it and find out you can’t actually fit the full track for some reason
• You’ll go to install it and find out you need to make some modification to the wiring which requires removing them
• The connector from the previous track may not end at the actual end of the track, meaning you need to offset the pucks
• Related to that one: you may find that you prefer having the pucks offset on purpose (more on that in “wiring-the-lights”)

It may feel slower at first, but it’s faster overall. Having to remove pucks from the track isn’t hard, but it’s time consuming and really annoying.

Test Early and Often

If you’ve had to cut a string to customize it some way, it’s better to find out now that it doesn’t work rather than after you’ve installed it. It may help prevent you from having to undo a bunch of work, but it could also prevent you from doing real damage to the rest of the system if you’ve accidentally wired something wrong.

I recommend using the smaller PSU and test controller mentioned early in this guide if you got them. Not only will it prevent you from doing damage to your real system, but it’s typically just easier.

Tight Fits and Factory Glue (when the puck won’t snap in)

Some of my pucks had a little leftover glue or residue on them from the factory. That made them a tight fit in the track holes. Most of the time I just had to apply a bit more pressure and they’d snap in fine.

I had a few stubborn ones though that simply wouldn’t go in. For those I just had to clean the residue off first. A quick scrape with a fingernail or whatever tool I had on me was enough.

Troubleshooting

For when you’re having trouble with the puck tracks themselves.

It Won’t Clip In to the Base Track

If you’re trying to install a puck track and you simply can’t get it to clip in to the base, the following list should provide assistance. I have listed them in order of most likely to least likely that they are your problem (based on how often I ran in to that particular issue).

xConnect plug isn’t sitting in the track correctly

If the center of the xConnect is directly on top of a puck, it will prevent you from getting the track in because it’s too tall. This was by far the most common issue I had because the length of cable seems to be just right to cause the connector to land on top of a puck. The easy fix here is to move the connector to a spot between pucks and then snap the track in.

A couple times I was trying to install a track in a place where I couldn’t reach both ends and this issue kept happening. In that case I would use electrical tape to hold the connector in the track where I wanted it.

Some portion of the wire is sticking out of the track

This is another one that is more likely to happen in a spot where it’s hard to reach or hard to see. It’s an easy one though. Just take a close look at both sides of your track and make sure no wire is sticking out.

Base track isn’t flat

If your soffit has a bow and you screwed the base track down too tight, your base track now has a bend in it as well. Loosen the screws and allow it to hang naturally.

The base track itself is malformed

I had this happen with exactly 1 base track in my entire kit. Overall it isn’t a big deal, but it was incredibly frustrating because the section where I installed it was very hard to reach. I spent 20 minutes fighting with it thinking I just couldn’t get the right angle on it to install it.

After taking the base track down and comparing it to another one, I finally realized the track itself hadn’t been formed correctly at the factory.

The most frustrated I got through the whole project…