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This tool is built and supported by a Silicon Valley team developing a new smart landscape lighting system. We believe contractors deserve better design tools regardless of what hardware they use, so we made this available to everyone at no cost. You're under no obligation to look at our system - though we think you'll like it when we launch. When we do, we'll add an optional one-click conversion button for our hardware; the tool will otherwise stay free and work with any equipment. No paywall, no accounts, no tracking, no ads - you own your designs and reports outright.
PDF, PNG, and JPG are supported. Single-page PDFs only. For best results with Fixture Finder, use at least 150 DPI when rasterizing a PDF. The exemplar patch should be at least 20x20 pixels, enough to make it unique. Higher pixel counts will slow down the scanning but can produce higher quality results.
Right-click (desktop) or long-press (touch) on open canvas space to get a placement menu.
Open Manage Fixtures in the sidebar and tap the + Add Fixture
button. Enter a short nickname (shown on the canvas wedge), model number, VA draw, and minimum
voltage threshold. Fixture types travel with the design in the saved .lscad file.
Yes. The app works on touch devices - pinch to zoom, single-finger drag to pan or move fixtures. Lock fixtures before handing off to a mobile device; a stray pan gesture can move them unintentionally. Note that Fixture Finder is not supported on touch screens due to the precision required for drawing scan regions.
VA is a volt-amp; it is a unit similar to power (watts) but not exactly the same. The compact definition involves 'apparent power'. But what is that and why is it meaningful here? Apparent power describes the effect where the wires and transformer see effectively more load than the average power actually consumed at the light (watts). For example, LEDs typically have high 'crest factor' where they concentrate their current at the peak of the AC voltage waveform. This concentration means that the wire and transformer do nothing most of the time and then they have to work very hard for a short amount of time (at the crest). That extra concentrated current requires larger wires and a larger transformer than you would otherwise expect from just totalling up the fixture watts with the assumption of steady (unconcentrated) sinusoidal current.
Volt-amps is always higher than watts, usually about 15% to 40% higher for typical LED landscape lights. It accounts for the burst nature of the current and the extra voltage drop that induces on the wires.
SPICE is a circuit simulator; you can almost say it is the circuit simulator. It is a core engine in electrical engineering, used to design power grids, electric cars, satellites, AI chips, LED lights, your phone. Almost everything that works with electricity has been designed with SPICE.
Use area-select to select the fixtures you want to lock, then tap Lock in the action bar. On a keyboard, hold Shift while dragging a box. On touch, use the area-select icon at the top of the screen. You can also batch-change wire gauge and fixture type from the same action bar.
Hold Shift and click fixtures in wiring order (or use the area-select icon on touch). You can add or remove fixtures by clicking/tapping the selection again. Once the route looks right, choose the wire gauge from the action bar.
Enable Show Ruler in the sidebar. Drag the ruler endpoints to a known dimension on your plan and enter its length. All wire lengths update immediately. Until the scale is set the simulator estimates wire resistance from pixel distance alone.
Tap or click the amber circle at the midpoint of any wire segment to create a draggable vertex. The tool recalculates wire length and resistance to match the routed path.
Yes. Your design is autosaved to your browser's local storage while you work.
If you close and reopen the tab, you'll be offered the option to continue where
you left off. To save permanently, use Save Design to download
a .lscad file.
A .lscad file is a ZIP archive containing your blueprint image and
your design data (nodes, wires, fixture catalog). You can reload it anytime with
Load Design.
Use the Share button in the sidebar. Your design is encrypted in your browser before upload - our server only sees the encrypted bytes (we can't read it). The link or QR code is required to decrypt the contents; our server only holds the encrypted share for 96hrs, then we delete it and the link/QR won't work. Note that this is not a collaborative cloud-based document; once you access it with the code/link, you get a local copy and any changes you make will stay local. You can of course reshare a design but that creates a new secret key, a new encrypted share and new QR/link, valid for a new 96hr window.
Use the Generate Report button in the sidebar. The report opens in a new tab containing a scaled plan, a fixture list and a wire and transformer summary. Use the Print / Save PDF button in the report to save or print.
The tool continuously runs a SPICE circuit simulation in the background - every time you place a fixture, adjust a wire, or change a transformer tap, voltages and currents update automatically. There is no simulate button. Results are color-coded: green is good, amber is a warning (except for lights), red is a fault.
Voltage thresholds are set per fixture type in your catalog. If the simulated voltage falls below the threshold the fixture turns red. The default threshold is 10.5 V.
Transformers are rated for power (watts). We simulate power at both the output lugs and inside the secondary winding. Because the winding has finite resistance, secondary winding power is always somewhat higher than lug power - the difference becomes heat inside the transformer.
The reliability score (0–10, top-right corner) measures how resilient your network design is to a single connector failure. Connectors tend to be the weakest link since they are constructed by breaking the wire insulation and are mechanically weaker than contiguous wire. Connection reliability tends to dominate system reliability, assuming the lights themselves are reasonably good.
The score factors in:
The voltage score (0-10, top-right corner) shows how the fixture with the least voltage margin will fare under adverse environmental conditions. The line voltage at the power outlet can sag typically by 10% or more; transformers have fixed input-to-output ratios, so the output will proportionally drop.
Interpreting the score:
To improve the voltage score: upsize the first wire runs from the transformer, maximize the tap voltage (try 15 VAC), or move the transformer closer to the load center.
It depends on your worst-case conditions. If you are simulating at the lowest expected line (power cord) voltage and highest ground temperature, 0.5 V of margin (amber) is survivable; more than 1 V (green) is preferable.
The voltage drop reaction of LEDs is quite steep. LED loads behave as roughly constant-power devices: if voltage drops, they draw more current to compensate. Of course this then causes further voltage drop in the wiring. Our simulator models this nasty cliff (a positive feedback loop); simple V = IR calculators do not.
Copper resistance increases by about 0.4% per degree C. On a hot day, warm wiring and warm transformer windings can add 5–10% to total resistance. Use the temperature slider in the sidebar to explore the effect - try the extremes to bracket your design's performance. LED power draw can vary slightly with temperature, but wire resistance effects generally dominate.
Try these in order:
A transformer's secondary winding is made of copper, which has real resistance. At high current, this resistance causes a voltage drop across the winding itself, so the lug voltage is always slightly below the open-circuit tap voltage. For example, a 15 VAC tap may measure 14 VAC at the lugs under a heavy load. The simulator accounts for this winding resistance.
Input voltage sag has the same effect: the transformer output tracks the input in proportion to the turns ratio, so a 5% sag at the power cord produces a 5% sag at the lugs.
In the US, utilities typically maintain voltage within ±5% of nominal (114–126 VAC) at the service entry point. Additional drop is permitted in the building wiring, so outlet voltage can be lower still. Most electrical equipment is designed to tolerate at least 10% below nominal (down to ~108 VAC in the US). Check with your local utility for their specific standards; requirements vary by region.
Fixture Finder is an optional AI feature that scans a region of your blueprint and suggests fixture locations based on symbol shapes. It requires uploading your blueprint to our server for processing. See the Privacy Policy for details on how that image is handled.
Fixture Finder is disabled on touch screens. The workflow requires drawing a precise scan region and a separate exemplar box around a single fixture symbol - a task that needs the accuracy of a mouse or trackpad.