LED Fixture - cheap

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Milad

You realize these are cheap, cheap quality lights. I hope no one is putting these on anything deeper than 10in tanks. 1w LEDs, no optics aren't going to penetrate the water well enough to give you good growth.

Also I cant tell which LEDs they are using from the description but in most cases, these fixtures from China are using sub par cooling and LEDs.
"

Stick to fixtures with 3W CREE XP-G, XP-E or XM-L LEDs that have been proven.

My 2 cents

FYI I sell and work with LEDs on a daily basis so I know a few things about them.

I need to make it clear that I am not suporting this e-bay light nore and my saying it is junk. but rather questing the post

so you think edison and bridglux LEDs are sub PAR? not saying thats what these spicific ones are but there are a lot of china made fixtures that are using them. the problem with a blanket statment like yours is it is totaly false. things made in China are made to the spec YOU design, if you spec high quality parts, you will have a high quality fixture.

If you do some real digging most products you are seeing are probably more properly labbled "designed in germany, or US ect... Made in China" but instead they say things like "German enginering" ect

when it comes right down to it I order a run of so many pieces. they gear up for my order and get the parts as per my spec tool up and then make my run. now if I spec a lumin output and temp in kelvin then I have no control over the LED used and they will use there own that they make in house. this is the cheepest option. I can also spec a brand name LED which ups the cost slightly.

now I don't know about this spicific e-bay light but the one I am looking at is a bonded board. so the PCB board which is made of thermal clad, which mean they use a thermal epoxy for the PCB part of the board and they clad that to an aluminum, or copper backing. now even here you can go cheep on the backing as you have the choice in thickness between 1 to 3mm I am looking at 3mm but I guess if I wanted to go cheep I could pick 1mm.

so basicly its not the fact that the product is from china that makes it cheep but rather it is the specs of the person in Canada or the USA that makes it cheep.


One other thing I would add is year there are a lot of bad LEDs out there but not all are bad, there are several very good quality brands of LEDs. do they have as high of an output as the Cree's? some yes some no, are they as efficient as the cree's in Lumin/watt.. no but some are close. is that efficiency difference going to cost a lot of extra power.. nope. pennies a month in the range were talking about. the biggest complaint about the no name LEDs are that the coatings are flaking off changing the output color. if you are using one of these ones then ya you have a hugly cheep setup, but any of the major brands are not like this, so there is Cree, bridglux, edison, philips, and a few others I can't remember right off the top of my head.

edison and cree are both 3 watt LEDs but they come about it different. cree uses lower voltage higher current, edison uses higher voltage lower current which is why you use 700mA max for the edison LEDs. Bridglux makes high power LEDs which are producing some pretty wicked outputs. Now a LED that is starting to become very popular is the "Steve's LED" all this is, is a guy name steve gets a deal on spec edison LEDs and resells them. edison LEDs are slightly less output then crees but they are more than enough and 1/3 the price. If you look at people running cree LEDs most are setting them up at 700 mA which is 70% to start with then using dimming circuts to run them at 70% so they are realy running there fixtures at about 50% which surprises me, very few are actualy running 100% so what does this say.. cree is actualy way more power than we need on a normal tank.

Steve

[mike31154]

Read the specs in the listing provided by the OP in Post #1 carefully and you will see that the fixture uses BridgeLux LEDs:
"LED configuration: BridgeLux 1w/LED"
I also mentioned that in my Post #8.

So unless the seller is lying or misrepresenting the product.... and to reiterate, not everyone's system needs the intensity of 3 watt Crees beaming down on their livestock. I have to agree with StirCrazy here, in that blanket statements about a certain wattage of LED aren't that informative and helpful in the broader sense of our hobby.

How about, 1 watt LEDs will run cooler than 3 watt LEDs, perhaps reducing the requirement for monster heat sinks? Or you have more flexibility with colour options since you can use more 1 watt LEDs in an array than 3 watters?
"LED quantity: 119pcs x 1 Watt LED (71 White + 48 Blue)"

Ask the folks who spent thousands on the now defunct company that produced the first generation of controllable LED fixtures how they feel about the quality of that product.

eBay like any other source for goodies, has its pros & cons. I've made many good purchases and also a few lemons, but generally, if you do your homework, you can often get a very good deal there.

[Milad]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

[b] If you look at people running cree LEDs most are setting them up at 700 mA which is 70% to start with then using dimming circuts to run them at 70% so they are realy running there fixtures at about 50% which surprises me, very few are actualy running 100% so what does this say.. cree is actualy way more power than we need on a normal tank.

Steve

incorrect sir

They run them at 70% to keep heat down and extend the life, that is the general consensus of output with extended longevity using standard hobby cooling.



I don't know what else to say other than try posting that light on any reputable board that has people who know about LEDs and you will get your answer very quickly. 1w LEDs just do not cut it. That is what im trying to get across, most of the cheap LEDs fixtures that come from china use sub par 1w LEDs (not all of them but MOST of them).

Also, if anyone has that fixture, we can put it up against 1/3 or 1/4 number of CREE LEDs and see the difference with a par meter and just your eyes.

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Milad

incorrect sir

They run them at 70% to keep heat down and extend the life, that is the general consensus of output with extended longevity using standard hobby cooling.

actualy your not corect at all, I am sorry that you are pushing them for you group led buy, but they are running them at 70% because they don't need to run them at 100% so yes they are also reducing the requirment of the heat sink a bit also.

I do agree watt to watt cree is the most powerfull out there, but don't let that fool you into thinking that they are built better than the other major brands. all the major brands are that for a reason.. they are good.

with the emergent of briglux and there 5, 10, 50 watt LEDs the 3 watt Cree is starting to go the way of T5's where they are being used for actining surounding more powerfull high quality LEDs. you should start selling briglux and edison also to give people more of a choice.

better yet, you should try out a 120 watt LED like the one I was playing with a few days ago.. I am still seeing spots

Steve

[Milad]

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

actualy your not corect at all, I am sorry that you are pushing them for you group led buy, but they are running them at 70% because they don't need to run them at 100% so yes they are also reducing the requirment of the heat sink a bit also.

I do agree watt to watt cree is the most powerfull out there, but don't let that fool you into thinking that they are built better than the other major brands. all the major brands are that for a reason.. they are good.

with the emergent of briglux and there 5, 10, 50 watt LEDs the 3 watt Cree is starting to go the way of T5's where they are being used for actining surounding more powerfull high quality LEDs. you should start selling briglux and edison also to give people more of a choice.

better yet, you should try out a 120 watt LED like the one I was playing with a few days ago.. I am still seeing spots

Steve

If you have very good cooling and very good heat transfer you run them at 100%. Everyone everywhere will tell you to run them at 70% because of the hobby cooling/heat transfer.

Im not trying to sell anyone anything, haven't even mentioned our website. Im just trying to make sure canreefers don't get stuck buying something that is going to cost thousands because their corals die or just dont grow.

120w, 50w, 50000w LED doesnt matter when it uses more power than equivalent 3watters. The point behind LEDs is efficiency not wattage. Go pick up a industry LED magazine, you will see the XM-L from CREE showcased all over the mag, its because its ridiculously efficient. You are buying LEDs to save money on power and replacement bulbs so why take that number 1 reason away just so you can have a 50w LED that you will have a hard time cooling that uses more power than equivalent XM-L LEDs?

Ill give you an example. Lets for instance have CREE XR-E vs CREE XM-L at 1A

XR-E 250lm
XM-L 415lm

thats 66% more light but you need 3.7v to run each XR-E at 1A. Not a big deal? wrong.
So if you have your basic 48v driver, you can do 12 XR-E or 16 XM-Ls for the same power.

That is 3000lm vs 6640lm. Big difference as you start adding more LEDs. So for the same power you are getting more than twice the light. So the end result, you use LESS leds and less power which equals more $$$ in your pocket.

This is why everyone is using CREEs for their aquariums (AS OF THIS POST)

Now lets check out your favorite 50w bridgelux.

I believe its 36v @ 1500mA producing 4000lm

So for the same power you can do 11 XM-Ls. That would be 590lm per for a total of 6490lm. thats 1.61x more lumens for same amount of power. Which is huge if you are doing a big setup. But thats not the kicker, cooling a 50w LED is no where as near as easy as cooling an array of 3w LEDs spread out.

So the 50w is most likely not going to last anywhere close to a standard 3w array.

And hopefully you have some crazy optic or reflector for that bad boy because you are going to loose half of the light onto your living room floor if you dont put optics on those LEDs because most of them are 100-125 degrees.

Right now, Im liking the XM-Ls from CREE. If another company comes along, has the right color that is more efficient than the XM-Ls, im all for giving them a try.

The real question is, why are you posting on canreef when a Canucks playoff game is going on?

[Milad]

You know what, my last post seems a little pushy but im just frustrated from this Canucks loss and i like CREE LEDs. Sorry if I offended anyone.

<3 StirCrazy

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by Milad

You know what, my last post seems a little pushy but im just frustrated from this Canucks loss and i like CREE LEDs. Sorry if I offended anyone.

<3 StirCrazy

haha.. not pushy but 50 watt briglux isn't my favorite, never even played with one. the 120 watt one I was playing with was retrofitting a 400 watt MH fixture for an arena so we could get a base line for coverage to see how many more we would need, and make the lighting even everywhere on the ice.

I did already conceed that the Cree is leading the way in efficiency and have never said anything to them not being one of the mose efficient LEDs out there,
what this thread is about is pour quality , not efficiency.. so about premature failures and output of the fixture which you do get from generic knock offs of the big brands. as far as efficiency is concerned realy who cares if your fixture costs 15 bucks a month to run instead of 12.50 well I am sure some one will care but when you were spending 35 to 40/ month for the MH its a mute point as long as you are getting the output you want.

this started off from some one saying that it is a garbage fixture because it is made in China, what we have tried to show while it is made in china it is using bridge lux LED, which are not bad LEDs, in fact they are very good LEDs maybe slightly less efficient that Cree but still a high quality LED. "made in China" doesn't mean junk but rather made to spec.. why do we make stuff in China because it is cheeper. factorys in china have come a long way.. most workers make a deicent living now days but compared to what we concider a diecent living yes it junk, but I am going by my buddies company and what he tells me when we got togeather last month while he was back in Canada for our friends funeral. He pays his employes 50% higher than the "average wage" for the area so he is far from a sweat shop. but because there is no unions and typical "lazy north american attitudes" more pieces get build for less money. he can even buy the parts cheeper because of the region he is in, I almost choked on the price he quoted me for Cree LEDs in my design, no way we could do it that cheep.

then Dez mentions there was no heat sink, and I pointed out you don't need a bulky aluminum one always as you can get thermal marterial PCB bonded to copper, aluminum, or other metal as an internal heatsink, then with fans your good.

if we had the resorses to do reflow soldering we could get rid of the stars the Crees are reflowed to, make our own board, and reflow the LEDs directly to it giving us way way cleaner looking fixtures, dropping the price quite a bit.

this is the way all the new onjes on the market are making them, vertex, ect... there is a company out here in Vernon or Kelona or around there that I have been talking to the guy. they already make lights like what we need but for plants so they have a real redish look to them, but they have been selling them for about 3 years now and it would be very easy to rebrand there light for fish tank. just got to change the colors of the LEDs ie.. get rid of the reds but theres are not dimmable ect.. just on / off but man were they ever lighting up the plants at the home show.

Steve