Review: 300x5050 SMD LED Warm White Light Flexible Strip (DX)

[purduephotog]

Instead of providing a link, I am posting the sku - 39241.

This item has been mentioned a few times for cabinet lighting. I have a pantry that has many shelves and would be difficult to wire it so that all the shelves were easily seen. At 5 meters in length, I believed I could wrap this tape around the outside.

First things- this tape has a silicone outer layer- rounded- around the LEDs. It is slightly sticky as silicone is. The back is an adhesive layer- which wasn't mentioned in the article. I had one part of the tape where the LED was radiused too tightly and cracked the silicone layer. It did not appear to affect performance.

There are two leads in and out of the strip.

I purchased from ebay what was supposed to be a 6A 12V supply brick. It puts out 12V, but only 2.45A. This means the strip is about 1/2 the luminance it should be.

Even with that, I was able to light up a very large pantry with the LED strip wrapped around the outside edge. I intend to attach the strip to some aluminum to help some lose the heat.

The first approximate 2 feet of the strip were much brighter than the end of the strip. It is my hypothesis that the wire gauge is too thin to conduct the current needed. I will probably be cutting the 5 meter strip into 1 meter or 2 foot increments and soldering a hot/return pair of 18 gauge wires along the length to improve the parallel feeds (effectively turning it into 5x 1meter strips and fed power from both the front and end of the strips).

I will post photos when I get my computer up and running... and get the strip installed again.

 

[purduephotog]

Some photos:

This is 8 frames shot with my 16mm- it's very distorted. Shot at a fixed shutter speed (1/50) and fstop (f3.5) at ISO 400, and Daylight (5050K).

Here you can see the 3 dies in each LED. As a comparison, the first 2 feet or so is very bright- about 30 to 50% more luminance- than the end strip. I have concluded that the gauge is too thin for the current (2.45A) and when I measured the voltage at the end of the strip (9.45V) suggesting I may need to parallel some additional 18 or 20 gauge wire to help things out.

A closeup of the dies.

Color rendering is pretty good at the temperature. I used the software to whitebalance and got around 2700K to some of the boxes. I didn't have my macbeth color checker handy otherwise I could tell you what the reference white was. Image was (as others) shot at 5050K (daylight)

 

[deadrx7conv]

http://www.dealextreme.com/details.dx/sku.39241

5 meters long!

Can't wait to see the photos. Should be nice.

 

[krog]

Hi,

how is the color temperature? Are the leds really warm or just not bluish cold?

Bye krog

 

[purduephotog]

Hi,

how is the color temperature? Are the leds really warm or just not bluish cold?

Bye krog

They are warm- probably a very accurate color temp of 2700K- warmer than the LED lights I just installed. I'll see if I can't snag a color meter ...

 

[krog]

They are warm- probably a very accurate color temp of 2700K- warmer than the LED lights I just installed. I'll see if I can't snag a color meter ...

Thanks for pointing me to these strips! I received one today and they look really nice. Light from these long strips is very different than light from single points as I'm used to, but it will be great for indirect light.

I'll have to test them when it's dark here in Germany, but at daytime they already look warm and bright. As you said, running some thicker gauge in parallel is a must, as the voltage/current drop inside the strip is HUGE.