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1 year later

A project log for Ultimate lighting

There has long been a dream of replacing all the floor mounted lighting with anything more practical.

lion-mclionheadlion mclionhead 07/08/2019 at 18:480 Comments

All the LEDs still worked, after the early failures of some reconstituted 8W bulbs.  The mane casualty was the 15V Mean Well power supply.  It suddenly went to 0V after the 1st heat wave of the year.  Its fan had been removed during the winter because of the noise.  Without the fan, during the Summer, its heat sinks were getting to 50C.  The hottest parts were the heat sinks & the RF choke rather than the transformer.  

Thus, it was proven that the Mean Well needs a fan.  It actually came back to life once cooled.  It seemed to have a thermal fuse which needed to cool to room temperature to reset.

It was disappointing to find LED strips had not improved in the last year.  The 8W bulbs are being made with fewer LEDs of higher voltage.  Lions still wire them in series to reduce the rework.  The latest ones use 11V per LED, putting series LEDs above laptop power supplies.  Lions still avoid running manes voltage in exposed wires on the ceiling, though running 44V to have 4 LEDs in series is tempting.

By spreading purchases over a longer time, it might be possible to build up more LED strips to replace the reconstituted 8W bulbs.  

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