Chinese black box LED

[FactoryKTMmotocross46]

I appreciate your sense of humor! I started a thread about fires started by black boxes and asked for experiences and photos. There were several responses stating the boxes were smoking, but no photos of burned boxes. Smoke doesn't necessarily mean fire as a a resistor or LED going south can create a *small* cloud of stinky 'burning electrical' odor. I'm skeptical since I haven't seen any concrete evidence but could change my mind.
Jack Kent recently sent me a paper concerning do's and don'ts with LEDs. I will try to review that paper and write a synopsis or post a link to it if possible.

With a fire, considering my 1% homeowners insurance deductible, it's still a better deal than buying 4 radions.

 

[oreo54]

Jack Kent recently sent me a paper concerning do's and don'ts with LEDs. I will try to review that paper and write a synopsis or post a link to it if possible.

What's needed more is some "lumen maintenance" studies.. I.e PPFD loss over time and what conditions.
Just had a report of strip lights (sub-1w diodes ) losing 1/2 "PAR" over the course of a year-ish..
Now not fan cooled and much lower in output but disconcerting.


Though all fixtures could benefit (or not) bb's by design should be more susceptible to this than well manuf. ones..

Lens failures, diode failures, driver failures, fan failures are more well known (dare I use "documented" ) than this..

It may or may not be an issue....

 

[Dana Riddle]

What's needed more is some "lumen maintenance" studies.. I.e PPFD loss over time and what conditions.
Just had a report of strip lights (sub-1w diodes ) losing 1/2 "PAR" over the course of a year-ish..
Now not fan cooled and much lower in output but disconcerting.


Though all fixtures could benefit (or not) bb's by design should be more susceptible to this than well manuf. ones..

Lens failures, diode failures, driver failures, fan failures are more well known (dare I use "documented" ) than this..

It may or may not be an issue....

This paper covers lumen maintenance.

 

[oreo54]

This paper covers lumen maintenance.

Yea...;)

 

[Dana Riddle]

Yea...;)

I'll write a synopsis of this paper ASAP and post here on R2R.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

Violet. Not ultra violet though. Violet looks good, but ultraviolet is another level that none of them have.

The thing with ultra violet is that the human eye cannot see ultraviolet light well, if at all, so when the corals fluoresce under good ultra violet light it gives a great pop effect since there is much greater contrast with the surroundings.

For example, if you crank up the violet light the corals fluoresce but everything in the tank is glowing purple. With ultra violet light the tank would appear dark, but the corals would shine bright.

Ultraviolet is great for aesthetic purposes for this reason.

True that violet 420nm is not true UV, it's about as close as the majority of the lower end lights on the market get. When looking at the spectrum UVa is 315-400nm. So 420 nm will still be effective to some degree for providing what's needed in the lower end of the spectrum. The color that makes the largest difference in color pop is antinic light at 445nm. Corals will fluoresce more under that color range than under UV.

 

[oreo54]

True that violet 420nm is not true UV, it's about as close as the majority of the lower end lights on the market get. When looking at the spectrum UVa is 315-400nm. So 420 nm will still be effective to some degree for providing what's needed in the lower end of the spectrum. The color that makes the largest difference in color pop is antinic light at 445nm. Corals will fluoresce more under that color range than under UV.

Of course the less, to you , visible light the more it seems to glow.

 

[Dana Riddle]

This light uses a LED with a peak emission at 400nm, with spillover well into the UV-A range.

 

[Dana Riddle]

Of course the less, to you , visible light the more it seems to glow.

That chart was made by Dan Kelly, based on the articles I wrote for Advanced Aquarist.