LED strip lights

[rsmith]

There was a thread on led strip lights in the ER. I started looking at the options on EBay and there are a lot of different. I've had a couple LED bulbs that made it look like the morgue. Anybody research on what is what with this lighting? Seems it's sold mostly by 5 meter spools some waterproof some not and the led's per meter seems to varry

 

[carolinacoast]

Another owner introduced me to their actual 'lighting designer' who is their friend helping after hours on their boat. He installs all matter of custom lighting in high end renovations. I immediately asked about under counter LED lighting, since I'm finishing the galley.

His response: step down to 12 volts, and 1.5 W per foot should be fine. He uses tremco flextape because of its flexibility. SInce his time is expensive, I get it. Tremco is expensive, but allows very easy modification for additional light strips, dimmers, splicing...whatever. They have it on their boat, and it looked great. I'm doing the same, but without the intro, I would have tried something much cheaper.

He recommended adding glue every 3" on the strip tape to make sure it won't come down from the UV. The tape comes in 20' sections and can be snipped every 2" or so. I just got the rev shelf intro pack on ebay.

 

[rsmith]

Kept seeing different #'s for these mostly 3528 and 5630

Difference between LED SMD 3528, 5050, 5630 LEDEditor: brightingstar Click: 44 Date: 2013-7-24
Difference between LED SMD 3528, 5050, 5630 LED

Nowadays, LED lighting becomes more and more popular. Whether for under-cabinet lighting at kitchen, wardrobe lighting, home theater, advertising display or ambient mood lighting etc., SMD LED is a good choice.

SMD LED gives high brightness while it has lower power consumption than of a normal LED light tubes (e.g. dip led) and traditional light bulbs. See its features below:

FEATURES
Small Size: SMD LED light source is a very small and light chips enveloped by epoxy resin.
Low Power Consumption: Generally, the voltage per SMD LED is 2-3.6V, current 0.02A-0.03A. It uses very low voltage and current. Power consumption is very low, just equals to 1/8 of incandescent light, 1/4 of traditional light.
Long Life Span: Under proper current and voltage condition, the life span of SMD LED can reach 100,000 hrs. Compared with the other LED tubes(like Dip LED),the optical decay reduce from 10% to 5% in 1000hrs. Produced by Automatic equipment, via heat emitting technical process, the life span of SMD LED is longer.
High Brightness: Mainly adopted 3528 and 5050 SMD high brightness chip, single SMD LED over 5.5lm/1800MCD.

As above, we have mentioned about SMD 3528 and 5050. What do they mean and what is the difference between the two? Let's see the following:
SMD 3528
consists of one light-emitting chip
dimension of chip : 35 x 28 mm
power: 0.08W/ pearl

SMD 5050
consists of three light-emitting chips
dimension of chip : 50 x 50 mm
power: 0.24W/pearl


SMD 5630
consists of one light-emitting chip
dimension of chip : 56 x 30 mm
power: 0.5W/pearl
SAMSUNG 5630 LED, super brighter

Theoretically, SMD5050 is 3 times brighter than SMD3528. One SMD5630 LED is one and a half more the brightness of a SMD5050.

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[Capt Paul]

Well, mine are 3528's. You may make a more informed decision with all of this information than I did. Since I was unsure that these would provide enough light to replace my fluorescents I chose the cheap $12 strips I found on Amazon just to try it. I hoped maybe the whole 15 feet or so might replace one light and if so I might buy two more to replace the others but I was still skeptical. I was thoroughly impressed and used the first strip to replace all three and very happy with the performance. I did buy one more strip and used maybe half of it to finish filling the space. I think I use about 3 amps with it all. Maybe the more expensive lights will last a lot longer but mine are plenty bright for the application and if I were to do it again, I'd do it the same way.

 

[thoward]

I use the waterproof 5 meter 5050 green on my sword lights. I cut them in half for my shrimp lights. They work great and are plenty bright. I can see the shrimp light 8' down in the murk of Haulover. I think the adhesive strip is 3M so it is pretty sticky. When I cut them, I put 5200 over the exposed area to reseal it. I also 5200 the first and last 8" or so just to be sure they stay stuck.

I am redoing a 25' Blackfin right now and will be using the red 5050 strips on it.

I would not hesitate to use it in the ER but I would put a drop of epoxy or 5200 every 6 inches.