LED Light Recommendations

[Quixote_1]

Quick update.

While I really love these 128 LED light strips, I am not enjoying my experience with the vendors. I ended up filing a claim with Paypal over the faulty light strips from Dealextreme. I guess DX is just as bad dealing with Paypal as with their customers when there is a problem, because I received a full refund from Paypal a week or so after filing the claim. I'm happy with the outcome, but I won't be ordering from them again because it's been a major pain having to deal with them.

Goodluckbuy.com is a bunch of scammers, apparently. I ordered 9 light strips from them (identical to the DX ones, but blue instead of red) and received only the LED part without the corresponding heat sinks that are supposed to mount on the backs of the LED strips. I contacted "support" the next day and finally started communicating with them almost two weeks later through MSN since responses to my emails were very delayed and confused.
After that time I was strung along for almost two weeks until I realized that I could no longer "force" a refund through Paypal because it had been over 45 days since I paid for the items (30 of which were spent waiting for the shipment to arrive). After I missed that deadline, I was told to "let Paypal solve my problem" and communication was cut off abruptly. During the time that I was "working things out" with "support", I was promised the heat sinks and told that they understood what I was referring to, and that they would be shipped in two days. Then it was always a question of waiting for someone to get back from vacation, or back from out of town on business, etc.
I got tired of hearing "wait 2 days" and told them that I would let Paypal know what was going on since I needed to protect myself before realizing I had missed the deadline. That's when they basically told me that I can go to hell.

I spent about $250 on the 9 LED strips and they are useless without the heat sinks. DO NOT BUY FROM THESE @$$#*)&s.

 

[Quixote_1]

Also, scriptx, How did those recessed LED units turn out?
My ex girlfriend is having her kitchen remodeled and if they are good, I will suggest she order a bunch of those.

 

[signal15]

Home Depot has some additional products from Ecosmart. They have a 60W equivalent general purpose bulb. But the awesome thing is 125W equivalent PAR38's. 3000K in color, 1300 lumens. I bought 4 of them at $46 each. Because the builder was very bad at lighting layout, I need really bright lights in my great room to light the whole thing properly. These are much brighter than the 75W Ushio Halogens that I used to have in there.

 

[tmbrown97]

Lowes also has some LED bulbs for $9.98 right now that are great - excellent dimming. They say 40W but it's definitely more like 60W+ - in fact in my bathrooms they were brighter than the existing 60W bulbs - but very directional. Though they're not PAR's they also work great in can lights - very bright.

Quixote - what types of LED strips were you referring to? I bought some rolls of LED's - 16.4ft strips with 600LED's - just finished installing some as undercabinet lights last night; and I'm giving some to a relative to light up his under-house storage area - I imported them from China wholesale - they worked out great (but the little connectors you can buy with them are complete pieces of crap).

 

[Quixote_1]

Quixote - what types of LED strips were you referring to? I bought some rolls of LED's - 16.4ft strips with 600LED's - just finished installing some as undercabinet lights last night; and I'm giving some to a relative to light up his under-house storage area - I imported them from China wholesale - they worked out great (but the little connectors you can buy with them are complete pieces of crap).

Hi,
The LED strips that I'm referring to are approximately 8.5 inches long, almost half an inch wide and less than a quarter of an inch thick with the heat sink mounted on the back. Here is a link to the red ones that I bought from DealExtreme that had all of the dead LEDs.

I believe that the specs that they have listed are incorrect and that is why so many LEDs failed on mine. I took some readings from the blue ones that I have while they were in a circuit and posted a chart on an electronics forum with the voltage across the load (the LED strip) and the voltage across the resistor for 6 or seven different resistors and an expert there was kind enough to do the math and determine that the strips are actually most probably made to use 9V DC as opposed to the the 12 to 12.5 that is listed on the product page.
These light strips are good (nice and bright), but more work is required to determine the exact voltage and amperage required for the different colors.

Would you say that the LED light "ribbon" that you ordered is bright enough for your application, or would you try another solution if you could go back and do it again?

One final note - I received the heatsinks from Goodluckbuy last week. I'm not sure what happened, but they had shipped them to me on the 25th of April. The person I was trying to work the problem out with apparently was unaware of this, so up until we broke communication they were telling me, "in two days" every two days. It would have been a lot better if they had been organized enough to know that they had already shipped it. Then I wouldn't have to call Paypal and my credit card company to cancel my claim/complaint since I never would have filed them to begin with.
In any case, I have the strips now and the hardware that is required to use them, but since I found out that the specs are wrong, I need to order a bunch of high wattage resistors before running them.

I'd really like to hear from ScriptX on how those under-cabinet recessed LED fixtures are working out for him...

 

[scriptx]

The puck's that I ordered were great. I was actually worried that they had a strange looking grid of LED that was highly visible in the light, but once I had them installed, the large visible LEDs actually look great and add a modern flair to the pucks. As for light, I went with the warm LEDs and with three lights in a utility closet and 6 in a bedroom closet, there is more than enough light. I really could have went with 2/4. Superbrightleds was great to work with as well (however, I didn't have any returns and the return process is the true measure of a store IMHO).

I'll post some pictures of the installed lights soon. I still don't have the doors installed since I live in WA and we have had the worst year on record so for rainy days, the sun in the last week allowed me to work on my retaining wall. Which I would argue is much more fun than painting and installing doors!

 

[Quixote_1]

Thanks for the detailed review. I'll tell her that she should bring back the ones she bought at a boutique (total ripoff, if you ask me; she paid $50 each puck and the same for each of a couple of AC adapters). I hope she has time to receive the ones from Superbrightleds before the contractor installs the cupboards!

So do these things look good enough to be installed in a $30000 kitchen?

 

[Desert_AIP]

I love the LED bars. I'm using them undercabinet in our kitchen with a dimming 24V transformer.
I use the warm color 6" bars at about 18" spacing.

Super Bright LEDs has good prices on the bars and cabling
http://www.superbrightleds.com/cgi-bin/store/index.cgi?action=DispPage&Page2Disp=%2Flight_bars-rigid.html

I am using the dimming power supply from Environmental Lights hardwired and controlled by a UPB dimmer. Environmental Lights prices on the LED bars is higher than Super Bright LEDs, but they do have some additional cabling bits that Super Bright does not. The build quailty on the Environmental Lights transformer is fantastic.
http://www.environmentallights.com/categories/1306_2424_3479/led-drivers-dimming

The dimming range is about 0-35 on the UPB dimmer. With 35 being full bright.
Anything above that is still full bright.

After I installed my system I found this dimmable hardwired transformer. I don't have any experience with it, but I believe it should work and is less expensive than the Environmental lights unit. I'm not sure how it compares with quality or features. I am installing another string in my laundry room, so i may give this one a try.
http://www.ledwaves.com/Dimmable-LED-Power-Supply-12V-DC-24V-DC-p-19707.html

 

[tmbrown97]

Would you say that the LED light "ribbon" that you ordered is bright enough for your application, or would you try another solution if you could go back and do it again?

I'm pretty happy with the ribbon - I did use a high-density one with 600 LED's per 16.4ft... The only thing I'm not happy with is the POS snap on connectors. Had I known I would've soldered the terminals on - but to fix it now would basically mean scrapping the first roll. We'll see how much it irritates me.

What I really like about the ribbon is the very continuous string of light with no real breaks.