Under Cabinet LED (Inspired LED)

[DanManTX]

Does anyone know about this company "Inspired LED"? I've searched CPF and nothing comes up.

Mouser Electronics carries their products.

http://www.inspiredled.com/under_cabinet.html
http://www.mouser.com/inspiredled/

The lights I'm interested in are the "Super Bright 21 LED Light Panels"
Specs: 2 Watt light panel; warm white 3200K 55 lm; cool white 6500K 90 lm.

Are there any opinions out there on these? While I would like to install Juno or Kichler, I just can't justify the high price. One Juno/Kichler panel costs almost as much as 10 of these Inspired LED panels.

 

[deadrx7conv]

Doesn't look too bad for the price compared to some other "LED strips" out there.

http://www.mouser.com/catalog/catalogUSD/642/2510.pdf
http://www.inspiredled.com/pdf-files/super-bright.pdf

The problem with some companies is that they assume that the word "LED" means adding additional 500% profit margin.

 

[dirtech]

These would be perfect for a work bench I'm going to build.

 

[dirtech]

So I bought the 21 led deluxe kit in warm white. Haven't set them up yet but will give impressions and pics if anyones interested.

 

[kethd]

Light bars and panels are the most practical way to use power LEDs - light spread out, heat spread out, decent heat sinking, circuitry and power supplies separated. Much better than trying to imitate light bulbs.

The prices look attractively reasonable; the modular system looks good and practical. I'd love to see systems like this be standard in a few years, generic commodities with standardized interchangeable parts.

But I don't trust this company. When I see the claim "Long Life 100,000HRs" alarms go off in my brain. A claim like that seldom means "these have been carefully tested by an independent lab and we can confidently predict 70% lumen maintenance in typical usage after 100,000 hours". What it usually means is more like "we are building these with LEDS and we have heard LEDs are supposed to be good for 100,000 hours and all our competitors like to claim that so we will too".

Seeing the one dubious claim makes me question the other key claims, the lumens and the wattage. These could easily be exagerated figures, based on max performance of the LEDs rather than typical measured light delivered from the fixtures.

(On the other hand, many of their claimed lumen and wattage figures are so low that they may not be generating much heat. If their design is decent and they are using quality LEDs they really might last tens of thousands of hours.)

A key figure that should be required on all lighting is actual typical delivered Lumens per Watt, for the whole lighting system. Their wattage figures are too vague to even allow us to calculate, beyond an impression that it could be "up to" 25-45 lumens/watt.

The key immediate practical questions are, whose LED dies are they using? What temperature are they running at? How do you like them in use?

(The local Lowes has a display of bars and pucks in operation. The pucks are burning hot to the touch, around the edge...)

Please do post pics of them: splayed out, installed, and the innards if possible!

 

[dirtech]

Have them set up now. Nice warm color. Three bars total may not be enough light at 55 lumens per bar. I can hook 3 more bars up to this power supply. No heatsinking at all so hopefully they are being run at low currents. Pics latter of the set up and close up of die.

 

[kethd]

"No heatsinking at all"

Not even any sheet metal bar shells?

 

[hank]

> heatsink?

The Mouser PDF page says:

".... Light Panels are brushed aluminum in color ...."

But "aluminum in color" might mean matte gray plastic instead of aluminum metal.
The closeup pictures look like molded plastic to me:
http://www.mouser.com/search/include/LargeProductImage.aspx?path=inspiredled/lrg/under-expansion.jpg

I'm not cynical enough yet.

 

[dirtech]

No heatsinking at all as far as I can tell. Left it on for 4 hrs once and they were not generating any heat. Must be pretty low drive currents. Also this is 9 led per panel only generating 55 lumens per panel. No pics of emitter yet to much to do not enough time. My first impression was a rebel but not exactly sure what they look like. There was a thread with pics of emmiters. May have to find it.

 

[mds82]

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=298498

this is what i did for my house. i just used flat aluminum and these parts. it looks PERFECT. i barely use the lights on the ceiling.

 

[LEDninja]

I have recovered the following data from Google's cache manually.
Please post any errors and corrections in a new post below.
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The format is:
Date, time, old postcount#, poster;
post data
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I will try to fix the CPF links in the next 2 weeks or until I give up in frustration. Can not do that and verify with CPF down.

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11-17-2010 10:30 PM #11 jtupling

Originally Posted by dirtech
No heatsinking at all as far as I can tell. Left it on for 4 hrs once and they were not generating any heat. Must be pretty low drive currents. Also this is 9 led per panel only generating 55 lumens per panel. No pics of emitter yet to much to do not enough time. My first impression was a rebel but not exactly sure what they look like. There was a thread with pics of emmiters. May have to find it.
I was hoping to find out how satisified you were with the LED lights from inspiredled.com. I am thinking about ordering from them, but wanted to get some input from someone who has used their lighting.

Thanks!

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11-25-2010 08:58 AM #12 dirtech

Sorry it took so long to reply. Overall, for $48 I'm satisfied with this unit. However, I could still use more light for my work bench. I'm very pleased with the 3k color tint and may be adding a couple more strips to my current setup for more overall light. I would like to see some heatsinking and these LED's driven a bit higher. I bet they could drop the # of emmiters and maintain the same or higher output if they did this. But, maybe at the expense of safety or durability. These are for under cabinet lighting so maybe there is a fire risk if the units get to hot.

They shipped the units quickly and when I called with a question they were friendly and informed. I would buy again at the current price.

 

[peteg]

The problem I was having is that you see reflection of every single LED light on the counter if you have a polished stone countertop. The idea is to create a rail to mount to the under-cabinet that angles the light toward the backslash and slightly up. I used a v-shaped metal channel spray-painted black made by local heating duct supplier.

A good source for the LED's, tranformers etc I found is http://www.ledlightsworld.com/