Difference between LED Brand Name and DIY LED Fixture

[Bryopsis]

In my own experience, the Aquabeam 2000 has some Nature's Perfect led's from Osram. They're not available on the market and are exclusive to the company.

[Gtownguy487]

Can those lights be hung freely or do they have to attach to that bar

[Gtownguy487]

bump AquaRays? feedback?

[jestronix]

One thing we also haven't looked at is safety. I have a DIY fixture, I wired it all myself and I'm not an electrician. You don't see too many people building their own stoves or irons, its the same voltage in there! so really an off the shelf product means your protected by safety standards and well insurance could be interesting if they spot a DIY fixture after a fire.

But you can do low voltage DIY, plug packs and dimmers etc, but again not sure from an insurance point of view how it goes when you get up around 48v with 3 amps flowing through, easy to start a fire. Also you can get a bite from 48v, ive had a punch of some solar panels at 48v, wasn't so nice. Then again there are low voltage licenses for things like POE and LED lighting in your house etc. Things to think about.

other than safety I love DIY, some of the controllers for dimming are getting up there now too. You can mix and match.

If I could request anything from a LED light manufacturer it would be "let me buy individual leds from you that are simple to swap in and out and that don't cost the earth". I know they are upgradable when they come out, but let me add and move lights on the puck individually, and let me order my light with what ever leds I want. To the point that the reseller can match my requirement and send it out with the leds changed over for me.

[Gtownguy487]

Any others have experience with ebay 165w led units or the aquarays?

[CjBurden]

look up evergrow lights. there is a thread about "chinese leds" which has some good info. Long story short, the evergrow fixtures can put out as much par as the high end units can, and while they don't have the bells and whistles, and may not have as full of a color spectrum as the higher end fixtures, they are really a much better bang for the buck. Especially when you consider how quickly people have been upgrading their high end LED's to whatever the latest and greatest is.

I was looking at lighting choices myself recently, and decided to go cheap chinese LED and if it doesn't work out, I'm out 180 bucks in the end but thats one of the cheapest mistakes you could make in this hobby. They look nice... the fans are a little louder than I'd like but its tolerable for me and if I really hate it, I'll swap them out for quieter fans.

As for effectiveness plenty of people report excellent growth with them.

[Gtownguy487]

Would love some feedback of the MarsAqua lights on ebay