After 5 years, the 19V laptop brick powering a diagonal strip perished.  There is no non destructive way to repair it.  There are 2 other laptop bricks, but with similar prospects so swapping one in wasn't worth it.

Thus began conversion to a 3A 12V brick + SEPIC converter to get 16.75.  The mane problem with this would be less dropper resistance but lions couldn't afford the wasted heat of the previous solution which used a resistor to drop 19V to 16.75.  Helas, the 12V brick had an immediate problem with the inrush current into the SEPIC converter.  After many tries with current limiting resistors, it ended up requiring a MOSFET RC circuit to soft start the load.

The only other time lions built a soft starting circuit was for a microphone switch.  They're really temperamental.  This one ended up doing the job.  The trick is if the light is rapidly turned off & on, it takes a few seconds of off for the soft start to reset enough for the 12V brick.

This led to a desire to move all the diagonal strips to a single 19V power supply & SEPIC converters for each voltage.  The 16.75 burns .5A.  A long planned future strip will run at 12V. 

The square strip began having LEDs die after 5 years. 

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With the plugs under the tables finally accessible, it was possible to measure the power usage.  The ceiling light burns 150W.  There is a desire to add more lights.  It feels like it could use a variable brightness.

The idea occurred of installing 4 telescoping poles in the corners & creating a frame instead of sticking LEDs on the ceiling.  This would take space on the floor, a key regression back to the old days but still not as bad as lamp posts.  A metal frame would allow heat dissipation.  It would allow more modifications.

Creating the diagonal strips with just 4 poles in the corners would be tricky.