EEVblog #764 - New Lab Ceiling LED Lighting Installation

[EEVblog]

Dave installs a new LED lighting system in the EEVblog lab, with 9 x 60W 600mm 5000k ceiling LED panels.
A look at hermaphroditic connectors.
What kind of lux improvement is there on the bench?
Has the colour rendering index (CRI) changed things?
They cost how much?
A look at Lifud brand LED drivers, with mini teardown of course:
http://www.lifud.com/En/index.aspx
http://www.lifud.com/En/product_detail.aspx?ProductsID=371&CateID=275

[steve30]

Very nice Dave.

Wouldn't mind some of those LED panels for here at home, but for now I'll stick with fluorescent.

What happened to your high quality NEC fluorescent tubes?

[twistedresistor]

Hi Dave.

Two questions about your latest video:
Can you tell us where you sourced the LED panels from?

Did you catch the brand of the little green electrolytic capacitors in the lifud LED driver? Are those Capxon/Samxon?

[piranha32]

The connector looks like a clone of Anderson Powerpole connector

[Muttley Snickers]

I liked this video and the audio was excellent, the lighting needed some work, oh look he did it.....
Your videos would be much brighter if you were to wear a hawaiian shirt, otherwise it all looks good....

Best Regards and Nice Job.


Muttley

[Floyo]

Hey Dave, I don't know if you fixed the RF switches yet, but you could try putting them a bit further apart. I have some of these kind of units that are popular over here,
and their manual instructs at least 50cm between modules. Testing confirms that they go haywire when mounted closer together, not responding properly etc.

said manual (in Dutch), page 5 (4 on the "paper" itself):
https://www.klikaanklikuit.nl/files/handleidingen/apa3-1500r_nl_updated.pdf

[EEVblog]

I liked this video and the audio was excellent, the lighting needed some work, oh look he did it.....
Your videos would be much brighter if you were to wear a hawaiian shirt, otherwise it all looks good....

Ironically I look shit in this video because I'm not standing at the best lighting angle 

[EEVblog]

Hey Dave, I don't know if you fixed the RF switches yet, but you could try putting them a bit further apart. I have some of these kind of units that are popular over here,
and their manual instructs at least 50cm between modules. Testing confirms that they go haywire when mounted closer together, not responding properly etc.

I don't understand why that would be? They are just receivers after all.

[bktemp]

Hey Dave, I don't know if you fixed the RF switches yet, but you could try putting them a bit further apart. I have some of these kind of units that are popular over here,
and their manual instructs at least 50cm between modules. Testing confirms that they go haywire when mounted closer together, not responding properly etc.

I don't understand why that would be? They are just receivers after all.

Almost every receiver contains at least one oscillator. Cheap RF remote controls use something similar to a regenerative receiver and those are actually small transmitters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit

[ElectroIrradiator]

Almost every receiver contains at least one oscillator. Cheap RF remote controls use something similar to a regenerative receiver and those are actually small transmitters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit

The detectors are quite likely (pretty much guaranteed to be) super-regenerative, a configuration which is a notorious wideband noise emitter at the receiving/signal frequency. They are supposed to be properly shielded via an appropriate enclosure, an isolating RF preamp etc. Otherwise one active detector can easily completely swamp an adjacent one with RF radiation, rendering one or even both of them completely useless. But frequently - and perhaps unsurprisingly - they lack shielding.

Count your blessings if you can get a pair using the same frequency band to work in the same room. Working at 50 cm separation? Awesome!

[deephaven]

Do you have a link to where you bought the panels from?

[Floyo]

Hey Dave, I don't know if you fixed the RF switches yet, but you could try putting them a bit further apart. I have some of these kind of units that are popular over here,
and their manual instructs at least 50cm between modules. Testing confirms that they go haywire when mounted closer together, not responding properly etc.

I don't understand why that would be? They are just receivers after all.

Almost every receiver contains at least one oscillator. Cheap RF remote controls use something similar to a regenerative receiver and those are actually small transmitters:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regenerative_circuit

Something like that seems to be the case, the circuitry inside these modules is rather basic and crusty, and the housings have no shielding whatsoever, so some kind of signal might easily get out.

A little quick and dirty test with an RTL-SDR dongle (closest thing I have to a spectrum analyser), "antenna" is an bnc to aligator clip lead with the lead shorted out into a single winding, which is put around the body of the receiver. The four dark spots at 433.92 are the signals from the transmitter from about 1m away. The huge dark red band is when I switched on the receiver. This is by no means a properly controlled test, but it suggests that the receivers do transmit. I kind of expected a cleaner tone to come out of it.
 

[EEVblog]

Yep, moving them apart did the trick. Argh.

[george graves]

Good compromise.  I like!  I never noticed too much noise in your videos - but for tiny chip camera, more light, the better.

Well done. Actually, colors should pop more with the lighting. Not bad for a consumer camera.

[peter.mitchell]

The connector looks like a clone of Anderson Powerpole connector

not quite. these are ganged, non separable connectors whereas andersons are single gangable connectors.
http://uk.anen-power.com/UploadFiles/SA2-10/SA2-10guigeshu2.jpg
 the same company does make clone anderson connectors though.

[Dave Turner]

Dave I noticed that you've removed the tube lighting that was over your bench. Whilst I understand that they weren't ideal for videoing; wouldn't they still have been useful for when you do any soldering etc? I would have thought that with the light behind you your own shadow could be an issue.

regards

Dave

[EEVblog]

Dave I noticed that you've removed the tube lighting that was over your bench. Whilst I understand that they weren't ideal for videoing; wouldn't they still have been useful for when you do any soldering etc? I would have thought that with the light behind you your own shadow could be an issue.

Not really, shadowing is minimal because it comes at all angles from the complete strip. I now have more light on the bench than I did before.
If I wanted more light for soldering it would be better to simply add a LED strip under the shelf rather than high up on the roof.
I also have lights on my Tagarno and Mantis for soldering.

[piranha32]

not quite. these are ganged, non separable connectors whereas andersons are single gangable connectors.

There are also ganged, non-gangable andersons. The ones on the Dave's panels are not exact copies, but clones using the same principle.

[plexar]

Dave,

I'm looking to do a similar installation in my basement to replace some florescents.  What brand of panel did you get and where did you get it at such a good price?  I tried searching online and did not see anything comparable.

Thanks,
Plex

[EEVblog]

I'm looking to do a similar installation in my basement to replace some florescents.  What brand of panel did you get and where did you get it at such a good price?  I tried searching online and did not see anything comparable.

http://www.lumin-lighting.com/

[N2IXK]

Some MAJOR differences in electrical wiring codes between OZ and here in the states, that's for sure.

All those flexible cords and power strips would be prohibited above a drop ceiling here in the US.  And a tenant could never do that kind of work in a rental space. The only place where a licensed electrician isn't mandatory is to do work in a building that you both own AND occupy as a residence. Commercial office space or a building that you rent out would both require hiring a sparky to do the work.

[Artlav]

...not enough light for video work...

Maybe you should get some REAL lights in there?


Just kidding... unless you want to do high speed videos next, that is.

[eneuro]

Not really, shadowing is minimal because it comes at all angles from the complete strip. I now have more light on the bench than I did before.

Quite nice panels, but isn't its light too directional, especially when all of them placed on roof at the middle of the room?
It looks like, there is much more lumens now, but shadows too 

It is a lot of light in the room, but it is not uniformly distributed. Additionally those panels are very thin and flat, so not too much light for room walls and I do not know, but those corners looks very dark.

When looked into this specyfication of maybe similar 40W panels http://www.lumin-lighting.com/products/441_Platinum-Series-LED-Panel-Light.htm we get among others such parameters:
Lamp Rated Total Power:         40 W
200 Pieces of SMD LED 4014
Beam Angle:     120°
this means that there is 30° degs shadows on the walls, so when this room is maybe 4m wide with those panels inside, there is let ssay 1.5m from those panels to wall roof, than we get shadows on the walls: tan(30°)*1.5~0.9m ~1m from roof with very poor lighting conditions and this effect seams to be visible on top left roof wall corner in spotted photo   

Quite interesting decent power LED panels, however I'd rather made measurements of room roof, than if we know what beam angle is and how many such panels we have, than simply I'd like to make rather otimization using eg. Monte Carlo method, to randomly locate them in all posible places on the roof (but in software of course  ) and by calculating in room areas of interest expected luminance from all placed panels, I could choose combination, which probably will create more uniformly distributed light from those flat thin LED panels 

But ok, just only thinking on possible ways to optimise placement of those panels on the roof, since their mechanical construction and beam angle can affect overall lighting conditions in the room. Probably I will try to do it this (maybe hard) way, but when we have such amount of light, than such effort to simulate in virtual reality first might be worth to try 

[German_EE]

Some MAJOR differences in electrical wiring codes between OZ and here in the states, that's for sure.

All those flexible cords and power strips would be prohibited above a drop ceiling here in the US.  And a tenant could never do that kind of work in a rental space. The only place where a licensed electrician isn't mandatory is to do work in a building that you both own AND occupy as a residence. Commercial office space or a building that you rent out would both require hiring a sparky to do the work.

I was thinking that as well. Dave, when you rented the place was the drop ceiling in place or did you put it in? If it's 'Dave made' you might be covered.

[EEVblog]

Quite nice panels, but isn't its light too directional, especially when all of them placed on roof at the middle of the room?

Nope, works fine for all practical purposes.

It looks like, there is much more lumens now, but shadows too 

It is a lot of light in the room, but it is not uniformly distributed. Additionally those panels are very thin and flat, so not too much light for room walls and I do not know, but those corners looks very dark.

I'm not concerned with shadows in the corner.

You have to remember that my requirements are different to your average person.

[EEVblog]

I was thinking that as well. Dave, when you rented the place was the drop ceiling in place or did you put it in?

I do not rent it, I own it.

[SeanB]

Tou and the bank..... The drop ceiling is a standard office feature, put in to hide services like the upper floor water piping and sewage lines, the cabling for the fire detectors and the AC ducting for air handling. In units designated as light industrial or light commercial a dropped ceiling will probably be absent, with a higher roof height ( typically 4m or more as opposed to 3m for office space) with all services exposed on the roof and the lighting surface mounted. There if you have an office area you typically will make it out of either demountable panels, drywall or shutterply ( the cheap option) with a suspended ceiling on top, with the top open and with the cabling, ducting and such lying on top of it.

If you want a more substantial indoor office area you make it from concrete blocks or bricks, though this is then considered a permanent structure inside the unit and if you leave you cannot take it with you, while the demountable can be removed to the new premises.

Where I work we have a mix of demountable partitioning ( came with the building mostly, and got moved around a bit as circumstances changed usage), drywall ( the system we got is obsolete, so we used drywall as cheaper than getting the matching replacement system which is eye wateringly expensive) or for some areas we built brick and block walls for more strength. Just busy patching some areas, where our trainee cleaner put the floor polisher through a glass panel. The other panel was replaced with shutterply as it will never get a hole in it again from that, plus the sheets of ply were cheaper than the drywall sheet and easier to handle as I could get them cut to size by the mill.

[eneuro]

You have to remember that my requirements are different to your average person.

Average person have no idea that those LED panels have quite narrow beam angle mainly perpedicular to it surface (not 180 DEG) even when mounted on roof and it has to be since they used hundreds of SMD leds in flat thin package

Anyway, I'd rather use wireless control, but each of those LED panels in independent way-I mean I'd like to have them all dimmable between 0%-100% but with separate RF receiver (or smart driver with one receiver multiplexing all pannels), to be able create light beams depending on situation, so I'd rather use smart (programabe)custom controler like this I'm working on now in my home automation wireless RF concept   


Classic mains wall switch with removed useless wires connectors and added custom PCB with MPU and RF transmiter module to be able control wireless switching of different devices in a preprogrammed way (eg. based on how hard it was pressed using Hall effect sensor inside, etc), so it can for example adjust light in the room based on ambient light present from outside window based on photodiode input inside room and try to keep lighting conditions in the room (or choosen place) at the same level regardles of external light condition, eg, night comming...or shadows made by artificial light...
Endless posibilities and among other safe light switching without any dangereous 230VAC grid main present on wall socket 

[NoItAint]

This is a great video.  Comparing the beginning to the end I see a lot more details in the background.  My eyes tend to wander around and look at everything.  The picture seems more 3d also.   

A lot of good advise is given that I don't have to learn for myself!  I never knew these panels existed before.  I've seen the LED fluorescent tube type lights, but I've been holding off buying any as they're more of a retrofit.  These panels have have got be better even light.  And the pricing is amazing.

Searching around I also see RGB panels exist.  That might be handy for my home hobby shop where wood projects, finishing, and painting sometimes happen.  It'd be handy to adjust colors sometime to match the  lighting of the place the project will end up living in.

And I could go Submarine red, with sonar pings in the background for those times when a project lets out some smoke.

[Alex Eisenhut]

That's not a hermaphrodite. This is a hermaphrodite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GR_connector

[NiHaoMike]

Interesting that the PSU doesn't appear to have a mains filter cap.

[EEVblog]

Tou and the bank.....

Nope, it's all mine, I have the deeds. The bank owns my house though.

[MikeW]

At work we have a bit of a problem competing with these cheap edge lit panels from china. It's perfectly possible to get more lumens for less power you just have to use a bit more of the ceiling recess that is going to waste anyway.

However most customers like things slim (regardless of the fact they can't appreciate it in most applications) and the price is very good.