LED Ribbon lighting

[Leon]

This is a little OT but I have used this type lighting on a couple of jobs and am getting ready to add more lighting in my wife's sewing studio. She has a 3'x5' cutting table and has wanted over head lighting for that and she has a sewing machine, specifically a "long arm" sewing machine that needs overhead lighting also. That requires a narrow but

11' long light set up.

Anyway I have been using the Armacost brand LED lighting from Lee Valley. It has been in the ball park on pricing up until recently.

Lee Valley

8' roll of 18 LEDs per foot runs about $42. Transformer min 15 watt about $23. Remote control/dimmer about $36. Connectors, wiring, about $5

Plus shipping. And made in China.

Amazon Hero LED Kit

16.5' roll of 36 LEDs per foot Transformer 60 watt Remote Control/dimmer Connectors, wiring

Shipped Free

Made in China

$49.99 Total

To compare, The Hero has twice the length ribbon LED with double the density of lights, 3 LEDs every 1 inch vs. 3 LEDs every 2 inches.

To get the same length and density of lights from LV would cost $149 plus a $50 transformer.

I should have the Amazon Hero lights on Thursday.

[Leon]

In case some one is interested, here is a link to the Amazon LED kit. It pretty much has everything you would need.

[Swingman]

Topical...

Need to replace the cove lighting in my stairwell, but was thinking about getting the driverless strip. Need 60lf.

Hard to find prices as it is to find product.

[Sonny]

Yep.

I ordered one for above my sewing machine. My little elbow(?)-armed lamp isn't bright enough.

Re: Last week, or so, discussion of T8 fixtures and bulbs. Yall jinxed me. Had a 4 yr old (4 bulb fixture) T8 ballast quit last week. Replaced it this morning.... *upholstery shop.

Sonny

[Leon]

With 40' to spare but 110 volt. Shorter and longer available.

[whit3rd]

That's not necesssarily a difference. Your lamps look like 'an LED' but actually might be modules with three in series, or (not uncommon) modules of nine (three in series, paralleled in three rows). I have ribbon lights rated for 20 mA per 50 mm segment, and others rated at

55 mA per 50mm segment, and have seen a variety of other configurations.

What DOES matter, is watts/segment energy use rating and lumens/watt efficiency numbers, but those are rarely available. For reference, the adhesive might melt if you go over 1-2 watts/50mm segment, and the efficiency of a very good LED can be 140 lm/watt (60 to 90 is common).

The LV units mentioned, using 15W per 8 feet, use 0.3W per 50mm The Amazon offering, at 60W per 16.5 feet, uses 0.6W per 50mm

[John McCoy]

whit3rd wrote in news: [e-mail]:

I'm sure that what matters to Leon is how much light comes out. And you are correct, there is a wide variety of LEDs and it's not a given, or even likely, that twice as many LEDs will give twice as much light (unless you know they are the same model of LED).

You're making an invalid assumption, that the LEDs use as much power as the supply is capable of. The Amazon part actually uses 24W per 16.5 feet. The Lee Valley uses 12.8W per 8 feet. They are essentially the same.

John

[Leon]

? What are you trying to say here? If this helps I am using the smaller 3528 LEDs vs the larger 5050 LEDs which require more wattage.

I know the watts that the lighting uses, I mentioned the needed size of the transformer/power supply needed for each "whole" string. If I cut the string shorter I will not need as large of power supply.

FWIW the LV LED 8' string with 3 per 2" uses about 14 watts. I miss quoted the above power supply and that would be marginally more expensive, ideally it should be the next size up, 30 watts, so as to not be running full bore.

The Hero 16'string with 3 LED's per inch uses 48 watts, a 60 watt power supply should be adequate.

All of this assuming that the wire to deliver the power to the LEDs is heavy enough gauge to prevent voltage drop. I simply use regular lamp cord, 16ga. IIRC, plenty heavy.

Actually usage of for the strings is 14 watts and 48 watts respectively for the whole strings.

Earlier I was stating the power supply size, not the actually rating of the strings.

[Leon]

Yeah. ;~)

And you are correct, there is a wide variety of LEDs

I am hoping that the LED's I am getting will be close to double the light out put given the actual LEDs are the exact same size, 3528 but double the density. If I were using the 5050 LEDs I could probably settle for 3 per 2" but those are harder to find at a good price.

Right, the strings actually use less, ideally the PS should supply about

1/3 more power than what the string will consume. And or the string should not be more than 3/4 of the PS rating.

I will restate that the 15 watt LV transformer that I mentioned originally should actually be the next size up, IIRC 30 watts. that would be about 50% greater than the max consumption.

On the Amazon Hero strings the 16' 3 LEDs per inch consume 48 watts per

16', not 24 as you mentioned above. And the included 60 watt power supply fits the recommended rating.

If the LV strings were actually 16' instead of the odd length of 8' they would consume about 28 watts.

After the smoke clears LV is approximately 4 times more expensive than the Amazon HERO, if the strings were equal length and density.

[DerbyDad03]

Must be an epidemic. I had a T8 ballast in a 2 light fixture go on roughly the same day as that thread started.

[John McCoy]

Leon wrote in news:efGdnbCb7JlKxLTKnZ2dnUU7- [e-mail]:

Yeah, I crossed lines on the chart and quoted the number for the wrong LED strip. So at 48W they should be roughly twice as much light as the LV part.

John

[Leon]

That's what I am hoping for.

[DerbyDad03]

Have you looked on eBay for other options?

I bought some 12v LED strips and a dimmer control to use with my pop-up canopy while camping. My son bought some 12v strips for his boat.

The prices were very reasonable for what we bought. I'm not sure how the prices for your set-up would compare with Amazon, but it might be worth a look for future projects.

[Leon]

So far I have only looked at LV and AMAZON with it's many providers. I thought getting twice the lighting density and twice the length at half the price was pretty good. It is not unusual to see a less dense string, 18 LCDs per foot in 16' rolls for less than $10. But then you add in the dimmer switch, power supply, leads, connectors and it begins to add up a bit. I spent 1/4 as much as what LV would have charged, apples to apples so to speak.

[Brewster]

I use a _lot_ of these LED strips in lighting applications.

The higher density strips do produce more light (obviously) but you can (and will) experience voltage drop issues due to the relatively fine 'wire' (copper PCB trace) in the strip itself. To get the best balance, you will need to power both ends of the strip from the transformer, center taps will also help. The efficiency is also not that great (though for this application it really doesn't matter). The LEDs are powered three in a series with a current limiting resistor, chained in parallel. Each LED drops a bit over 3 volts, the resistor burns up the excess from the 12volt supply as heat (the efficiency reducer). Another issue is the wire gauge from the power supply to LED strip. 16 AWG is marginal (the problem is much like using too-small speaker wire). I find that laptop power supplies work best since they usually have heavier gauge output cables, although many of the surplus Chinese supplies are in fact repackaged recycled supplies and often only produce 1/2 or less of their rated power. The best approach is to minimize the wire length between the supply and LED string, this usually involves running the 110V to the 'fixture', and embedding the supply with the LEDs.

For mounting, I'm a big fan of the Lee Valley fixtures. They have three styles, one for flush fitting in a dado, one for more of a surface type mount, and one for corners. They also have several styles of diffusers, from opaque where you can't really detect the individual LEDs, to more or less clear.

They are available elsewhere now, but LV still has a competitive price.

-BR

[Leon]

Actually I have used 16 gauge lamp cord for lighting my kitchen, The cord to each string of LEDs is a minimum of 6' and every thing runs cool

24/7, full brightness, for the last 2 years.

My intention for the current project is to not use 16' as a single unit with power to one end. More than likely the longest strip will be 10' long at the most and powered from both ends.

The next project will be 2-6' LEDs and both probably powered from both ends.

[Brewster]

The ribbons won't produce noticeable heat, it's spread out over 100's of devices and a big area, no worries there. You may or may not notice dimming at the end of the string, it depends on how well made the ribbon strip (conductor gauge) is made.

That'll work well.

Even better. Just following some normal installation guidelines make the LED strips a wonderful new way to light up things in a much more discrete way.

-BR

[Leon]

Exactly and my point. FWIW I have never purchased 16.5' ribbon LEDs before this purchase, only the 8' reels of ribbon LEDs and I did notice that while still on the reel the inner lights appeared to be dimmer than those on the outer perimeter. But again I am not intending to use the whole string and will double the leads to both ends. I want to light up a 15 SQFT area with LEDs about 30" above that surface. Testing the output of the Amazon HERO LEDs that I mentioned earlier in another post about 5' of that LED ribbon was adequate. I plan on using 2-4' strips and 2-2' strips to illuminate the area. The kit included all connectors necessary for this set up.

Surely. ;~)

I got most of my information as to what gauge leads and size of power supplies from Armacost a few years ago.