LEDgardener

Exactly. The Shenzhen manufacturers on Alibaba kept giving me weird chip names and suspicious datasheets, which really put me off. I went with a reputable redistributor of strips and will be doing a DIY build. It's worth knowing what you're getting.

chancewokc wrote: ↑

Sun May 13, 2018 3:24 pm

At the moment I am trying to get as much light and penetration for as little $ as possible

I still know very little about your situation. But I'm an old man who has had the chance to learn a thing or two about being poor.

Sometimes I gamble. When I can afford it. You rarely win, so gambling usually means paying to allow yourself a momentary 'rational dream'. I never gambled when I couldn't afford it, but I saw some people who did, and it never seemed to work for them.

Ordering the leds from alibaba is a gamble, offering a low payoff and low risk. I guess the most you can hope to win is about 20-30% savings, and probably the worst you can expect to loose is 20-30% of your lumens. Which might mean 10-30% of your yield, until your in a position to change your lights again.

I was very tempted, and mainly decided not to, because I consider this my research light, if I don't know exactly what its putting out, I'm on shaky ground with the conclusions from my studies.

For the brand strips, bridgelux would be your goto brand, to get light per$. I'll try to count how much lumens per $ you get with Vesta and EBgen2, so you can do a better comparison on what your options are. Vesta is 90cri, so it offers a little less lumens, but it has far red (emerson effect)which should be very important at lower light intensities. If you don't care much about the far red, or if you know your going for ridiculous light levels, then EBgen2 is probably your best bet. You might want to find a couple of threads comparing 80 and 90cri, before you decide.

Oh and incase you want to get a meanwell driver, you might want to look at the ELG series. It has the same efficiency as the HLG series, but at least here, its way cheaper.

Were happy to go though this stuff with you, and were also interested in all results people get gambling on alibaba.

The elg series has the same efficiency, but if you run on 100-180 volt power it only outputs 70 percent. You have to run the drivers off of 200+ volts to get the full power.

Examples. Most of my outlets run on 110v in the house. The only things that run on 220v are big appliances like the dryer, stove, furnace, and ac.

Sdfoster 22 thank you for the link to the strip Build. I would rather do strips than qb's. I just didn't know how to find the good ones.. That link is exactly what I needed...

sdfoster22 wrote: ↑

Mon May 14, 2018 9:41 pm

The elg series has the same efficiency, but if you run on 100-180 volt power it only outputs 70 percent. You have to run the drivers off of 200+ volts to get the full power.

Examples. Most of my outlets run on 110v in the house. The only things that run on 220v are big appliances like the dryer, stove, furnace, and ac.

Hmmm..... so mainly for europe then

Or you can run 220 to your room/tent. Or place your operation near a 220 outlet.

Have transformers evolved from the 90's? or still huge heavy lumps? 220v is more efficient right?

r2t from alibaba has some new boards with LM561C & additional 660nm diodes on it, optional fixture with integrated meanwell driver. also available with added 450nm LEDs prices depending on order quantity. <10, <50 or <100 they also have test reports:

tazztone wrote: ↑

Thu May 17, 2018 6:05 am

r2t from alibaba has some new boards with LM561C & additional 660nm diodes on it, optional fixture with integrated meanwell driver. also available with added 450nm LEDs

I saw these when I was looking for my boards. They look pretty cool. Although I did notice that the spectrum chart embedded in the product image is different than the spectrum chart in the sphere test data sheet.

i just got some led strips and each diode has a small silver dot in it.
is this normal? looks like the soldering melted the yellow phosphide?