I'd been thinking about putting LED strips in my safe for awhile but never got around to doing it. Now that my safe is in a pretty dark place, I went ahead and jumped on it. I looked at a kit to do it for $40, but priced everything out on Amazon and realized I could do it for less than $15 and with a magnetic door switch. I never thought about the actual quality of the LEDs though I did. look at a lot of reviews. I got 16 ft for a little more than $6 so yeah they're probably really cheap ones. Install was easy with a strong adhesive, and they put out nice and bright white light (they're daylight white) and really makes my safe look top notch. Whether they hold up or dim over time, I don't know, but I'm pleased so far and will only be used in short bursts. If they crap out or anything, I'll be sure to update.
Recent LED Strip Comparisons?
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idleprocess
Flashaholic
You're likely not going to be putting many hours of operation on them over time nor should you be operating them for long periods, so the longevity may not be terribly important.
I did something similar and they operate perhaps 60 minutes a month in increments no longer than 10 minutes.
May I ask if your setup is 12VDC or AC powered?
idleprocess
Flashaholic
Nothing exotic - 12V DC using a regulated AC-DC power supply and a door switch that actuates the DC side.
Ok, am powering mine with 8xAA and was curious about an estimate on battery life. As little as I keep the door open, I expect it to last a good while.
Camo5
Newly Enlightened
Recently A friend of mine purchased a "starry night" copper wire waterproof LED strip that looked fantastic wound around his walls in the dorm room. A quick amazon search revealed that they are available from anywhere between $8 and $22, but I can't figure out at all which cheaper ones could be legit or not, nor are there any details of what LED is used...
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TheGiantHogweed
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I should have realised that it was possible to power a 12v strip with 8 AA batteries as they are 1.5v each. Something else that would be useful it if I could get my 2m 5v USB powered LED strip to be AA battery powered so I don't have to use my power bank. I have seen that 3 AA batteries can be used to make a 5v strip work. Although that will only add up to 4.5v. I have just bought this:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00SUXSH36/
It takes 4 batteries which would add up to 6v so I am wondering if that would be too much for the strip or not.
I went DC powered because I didn't want to drill a hole in my safe. I tested the lights with 8 eneloops I have which do not add up to 12v and they still powered the lights. For how long, I don't know though.
idleprocess
Flashaholic
Making some assumptions and using some round numbers:
A typical 12V strip w/ single die packages probably drives each 3-LED segment at 20mA, and LED Vf is probably around 3V, leaving 3V of voltage margin for regulation. 3V / 0.020A = 150 ohms.
Your eneloop pack will range from ~1.45V hot off the charger to ~1.10V nearly flat, so you're likely to see the following per-segment currents at the following voltages:
- 1.45V (2.6V overhead) : 17mA
- 1.40V (2.2V overhead) : 15mA
- 1.35V (1.8V overhead) : 12mA
- 1.30V (1.4V overhead) : 9mA
- 1.25V (1.0V overhead) : 7mA
- 1.20V (0.6V overhead) : 4mA
- 1.15V (0.2V overhead) : 1mA
- 1.10V (-0.2V overhead) : -1mA
Note that LED Vf should drop somewhat as current decreases, thus the actual LED current dropoff won't be as simple as modeled - at 1.1V you'll probably still get some light. I would multiply the number of segments times the 1.3V current value to back-of-the-napkin estimate total current draw then compare that to the nominal mAH of your eneloops. If you have, say 20 segments drawing 180mA and your eneloops are 2000mAH then your runtime is going to be approximately 11.1 hours.
alpg88
Flashlight Enthusiast
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i use 6aaa to power my dog harness, still works and is pretty bright, but does not get hot at all. as for runtime for your 8 eneloops, you need to mesure the current, because at less than 12v they do draw not as much current, as they would with 12v supply, cuz if you find info on current draw, it would be for 12v, not 9.6v you get from eneloops, measure the current draw first, than you can calculate runtime.
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I hate to ask...
I've been fighting for high cri LEDs. I found High CRI LED Lighting | Yuji LED, got some samples and ran them down in the lab. Their violet pumped 6500k is dead on. So I bought 100 of the 5730 chips to make little lights for my analysts.
Also got some 2700k to make s bedroom night lights.
How does one go about getting these made directly? I have been buying cheap mcpcb linear from Ali and cutting and desoldering chips.
Just really want to finally get my perfect color dim light right.
stevemayman
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Hi Brian,
I bought Yuji's (The 90 CRIs) for our kitchen. They are not just under cabinets, but in cove lighting and pendants as well providing all the light to the kitchen. They are on a lot. My observations:
I had an extensive amount of interaction with an engineer at Yuji, who was happy to provide reams of test data and discuss his product at a level I couldn't possibly understand. What I could understand: this company makes their own ribbons and really care about innovation and light quality.
I bought lots of different commodity LEDs on Ebay and Amazon for comparison. All, regardless of brand and price, were visually identical but varied considerably, largely in color temperature. Even reels from the same vendor purchased at the same time differed. Typically the LEDs were considerably cooler than advertised.
The Yuji's, however, were clearly different. The traces were more substantial and just seemed better made. They did seem to be spliced from shorter strips though, which was occasionally frustrating if I wanted to cut at a place where they had spliced.
I did a side-by-side comparison with one of the better commodity strips with identical specifications to the Yuji, except for the Yuji's higher claimed CRI and higher claimed wattage and lumens. To my surprise, using the same power supply to power both strips they looked almost identical. No significant difference in brightness, color temp, or CRI! They Yuji was drawing slightly less than the commodity rather than twice as much. I asked the Yuji engineer about this and he said that I was not driving them to their rated potential based on my power supply. Very interesting.
I can't remember the exact pricing, but my recollection were that the Yuji's were about 4x the price of the commodity strips at that time.
After about two years I am extremely happy with the Yuji. They have a very pleasant color temperature, seem to be high CRI, and have performed flawlessly. We use them perhaps 4 hours a day and I have noticed no loss in brightness so far.
Some months later I had to install about 25 meters worth of LEDs for our office. This time there was a high CRI option available on eBay, or so they claimed. I ordered a roll and they appeared to be of high quality and the light looked good. They guaranteed that if I bought 4 more rolls the light would match perfectly across strips. I went for it and was pleasantly surprised. They have been in about a year now, and are used about 10 hours a day. No problems so far with these either. No noticeable drop in brightness, etc.
If I were doing this for a living or providing product to customers I would go with Yuji. They seem very earnest, very proud of their quality, and like they truly care. I trust them. I just went back to their site to see if their prices had dropped in the last two years. Nope. Still $100/5m roll, but now you get 95 CRI for that (instead of 90) and 120 diodes/meter instead of 90. I did not compare the rest of the specs because I am not sure where I kept them.
Hope that is helpful. I really don't think you can go wrong with the Yuji, but if you are a gambler you can find a lower price for what might be a comparable product on eBay.
degarb
Flashlight Enthusiast
Excellent information.
I went to the yujiintl link. The CRI break down graphic hit me likd a ton of bricks: It isn't the CRI number that is of interest, rather the CRI breakdown. I now know, why low CRI lights may work fine on all colors but one or two. If they won't publish the info, I will be forced to break out my paint color decks and do a systematic hunt for weakly rendered colors, and avoid using that light im areas with that color range. http://www.yujiintl.com/img/graphics/standard_led_cri.png
stevemayman
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Excellent information.
I went to the yujiintl link. The CRI break down graphic hit me likd a ton of bricks: It isn't the CRI number that is of interest, rather the CRI breakdown. I now know, why low CRI lights may work fine on all colors but one or two. If they won't publish the info, I will be forced to break out my paint color decks and do a systematic hunt for weakly rendered colors, and avoid using that light im areas with that color range. http://www.yujiintl.com/img/graphics/standard_led_cri.png
Yeah, this is very interesting from a technical point of view, but not as easily observed in the real world. We do some beta testing for printer manufacturers and have test prints hanging around that have a wide range of colors in natural scenes. I took those images as well as some brightly colored Pantone swatches when I did my subjective CRI comparison. I have to say the difference between the high and low CRI strips was subtle to undetectable. I also compared each to halogen and again only subtle difference. So subtle that I doubt most people would even notice. If you read the technical documents you imagine something like low pressure sodium where there is almost no color rendering, but in reality most of the better low CRI strips seem to do just fine. Even the reds seemed quite well saturated.
This article from C-net is also very informative, and seemed to match my real world experience. In spite of the Cree bulb having a severe drop off at the red wavelength, this was not too noticeable in the photographs. Color temperature seems to have a profound impact on perceived light quality with CRI a distant second. Some cheap ribbons have a green cast which is the kiss of death, but if you get a decent yellow/amber hued 2700-3000 K temperature then 80-90 CRI may be fine for general purpose use.
Our office currently has cheap 3000K high CRI ribbons, pendant fixtures with integral LEDs at 3000K and MR16 halogens all peacefully coexisting. The color difference is subtle. Occasionally I will ask people sensitive to color if they noticed the quality of light or color difference among our various fixtures and none have yet. These LEDs work fine for us, and for this early in the game that is saying something! In a decade it would not surprise me if all LEDs were 95+ CRI and much more faithful to their claimed color temperature.
Update: I put these batteries in on 11/18/2015 and they're still going strong, just as bright and I open the safe a lot. Even for at least a couple hours straight the other weekend when I was cleaning it out. Very pleased so far with this setup for less than $15.
Evaluation LED strip
1. LED strip beads used. Whether it is pure copper bracket, gold. Inferior LED using iron and aluminum brackets, costs less than 1/5
2. The LED strip circuit board used in an overlying thick copper foil thickness is enough
3. Each whether to use a short constant current IC to ensure that no pressure drop behind, made of lights dark.
1. LED strip beads used. Whether it is pure copper bracket, gold. Inferior LED using iron and aluminum brackets, costs less than 1/5
2. The LED strip circuit board used in an overlying thick copper foil thickness is enough
3. Each whether to use a short constant current IC to ensure that no pressure drop behind, made of lights dark.
Can anyone recommend a good supplier? I am looking to replace the LED strip for the monitor backlight I made a few years ago that has mostly dimmed/burned out now (bought from eBay).
I'm looking for ~5m, up to ~$40, but I think <$10 is a better value for what I need. I was happy with the old cheap one.
Is 5630/5730 the best option? I've heard good things about 2835/3014, but they're harder to find. I'm thinking about making a metal backing bracket to use as a heat sink. I'm looking for unpainted copper & non-waterproof (if it's better). I was thinking about trying to solder quality chips on, but I don't think that's worth it.
I'm getting cool white, the RGB I've seen don't offer a full color palette, they just change between single color options. (And RGB I've seen is usually 3258/5050)
Thank you for any recommendations, I'm looking at $7/5m on Amazon, or going with a seller with good reviews on AE.
I'm looking for ~5m, up to ~$40, but I think <$10 is a better value for what I need. I was happy with the old cheap one.
Is 5630/5730 the best option? I've heard good things about 2835/3014, but they're harder to find. I'm thinking about making a metal backing bracket to use as a heat sink. I'm looking for unpainted copper & non-waterproof (if it's better). I was thinking about trying to solder quality chips on, but I don't think that's worth it.
I'm getting cool white, the RGB I've seen don't offer a full color palette, they just change between single color options. (And RGB I've seen is usually 3258/5050)
Thank you for any recommendations, I'm looking at $7/5m on Amazon, or going with a seller with good reviews on AE.
Lithopsian
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Work out how bright you need, on what length of tape, then you'll know what type to buy. For less than $10, you'll probably need to import from China, but maybe you can find something. 5630/5730 is (potentially) more powerful and brighter (and hotter!) than the others. 3528 is essentially obsolete, 2835 is better in every way except perhaps price. 3014 is in between, but you probably won't find it so perhaps best to forget about that. Look out for double-density tape if you need more power or want the dots closer together, without jumping to 5630 levels.
And of course, you'll need to know what colour! I was assuming white. If you need RGB, colour changing, anything like that then you'll be wanting 5050 strip. Only reason to choose 5050 really now.
I would recommend non-waterproof unless you need waterproof. Easier to stick on (and stay stuck!), less chance of yellowing, cracking, and heat buildup.
And of course, you'll need to know what colour! I was assuming white. If you need RGB, colour changing, anything like that then you'll be wanting 5050 strip. Only reason to choose 5050 really now.
I would recommend non-waterproof unless you need waterproof. Easier to stick on (and stay stuck!), less chance of yellowing, cracking, and heat buildup.
Thanks, I figure that since I don't really know how to spot fakes/quality I'm better off going cheap. Plus I don't really need high CRI. Any idea if 5630/5730 will be alright being run for hours at a time at 50-100% brightness? I'm trying to make a metal backing plate out of square stock, but it might not happen. If I can get 18+ months out of it I'll be satisfied. Going to get cool white, unless I can find an RGB which can display the full color palette.
ssanasisredna
Enlightened
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People are getting too hung up on 5630, 2835, 5050, 3014, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, etc. ..... it's all pretty meaningless.
The die coming out of Taiwan (Epistar), and the better mainland Chinese companies (various), used properly, is going to last 50,000 hours with little degradation (70%+ lumen maintenance). The problem is are they used properly. If it's a die meant for 20mA and it's driven at 50mA, it's not going to matter whose die it is. Same deal if it is packaged really poorly.
W.r.t. package type, the bulk of the volume market has moved past the 5630, it's just too expensive a package. 3030 packages are preferred in the 0.5W (ish) to 1W range. 2835 is somewhat dominant at 0.2 - 0.5W, driving a lot of the LED tube and some of the backlight market, with the backlight market moving to much smaller packages, i.e. 3014/4014 as they need them to be thinner.
A "good" 60mA 2835 LED is about $0.01. A lot of the strips use lower quality than that. That market is going to be better served by 3014 LEDs as the volume of those increases as the package costs less (less phosphor in particular). Given $3.00 of LEDs in a 5 meter, 300 LED strip, it would be pretty easy to make something tolerable in the $15-20 resale range), with decent thickness copper so there is not too much drop. Unfortunately, as most people want the cheapest crap, you get $10 strips with crap LEDs, too thin of copper, etc.
The die coming out of Taiwan (Epistar), and the better mainland Chinese companies (various), used properly, is going to last 50,000 hours with little degradation (70%+ lumen maintenance). The problem is are they used properly. If it's a die meant for 20mA and it's driven at 50mA, it's not going to matter whose die it is. Same deal if it is packaged really poorly.
W.r.t. package type, the bulk of the volume market has moved past the 5630, it's just too expensive a package. 3030 packages are preferred in the 0.5W (ish) to 1W range. 2835 is somewhat dominant at 0.2 - 0.5W, driving a lot of the LED tube and some of the backlight market, with the backlight market moving to much smaller packages, i.e. 3014/4014 as they need them to be thinner.
A "good" 60mA 2835 LED is about $0.01. A lot of the strips use lower quality than that. That market is going to be better served by 3014 LEDs as the volume of those increases as the package costs less (less phosphor in particular). Given $3.00 of LEDs in a 5 meter, 300 LED strip, it would be pretty easy to make something tolerable in the $15-20 resale range), with decent thickness copper so there is not too much drop. Unfortunately, as most people want the cheapest crap, you get $10 strips with crap LEDs, too thin of copper, etc.
