Source for DIY light components?

I'm a self proclaimed tinkered looking for the best place to get stuff for building my own lights. Can you point me in the right direction?

garyold said:

I'm a self proclaimed tinkered looking for the best place to get stuff for building my own lights. Can you point me in the right direction?

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I do most of my LED parts ordering from Hotred, Kingbrite and OTDiode.

Arrow Electronics usually has random low pricing on various strips chips and drivers when they are older or depleted stock or making space in the warehouse etc...
Octopart is helpful for parts availability and price comparisons.
The Best Deals Thread has regular finds coupons and codes for a range of retail items.
Also This thread has sort of been adopted as a place to post about component deals

Rapid led and HLG has some kits.

If you want to use comercial parts (as in regular ledstrips from samsung, bridgelux or get led drivers): if you have a modelnr or partnr of what youre looking for you can try octopart.com . It searches major distributors and retailers for stock and prices. Edit: just seen octopart is already mentioned.

Alibaba: Kingbrite and Meijiu are old legacy suppliers that have been reliable. Kingbrite can make supplement strips (reds, uv etc) and sells some of their boards as diy parts for quite cheapo. I always contact by email to sort out ordering; the app isnt always right in pricing and such.

Bridgelux: ive bought bridgelux locally to prices that was considerably lower than the global distributors (digikey, arrow, mouser). It may be a good idea to check their web where to buy from a local distributor, especially for drivers. They are the most likely part of your diy to fail and if you can get warranty locally it beats sending drivers back to china.

OP: do you have a specific space in mind? The easiest place to start this thing is from space and budget.

A quick question. I can use any driver on an rspec v2 boards as long as it's at least 48v preferably 54v constant current driver correct? I have 3 boards id like to get to work

Er3 said:

A quick question. I can use any driver on an rspec v2 boards as long as it's at least 48v preferably 54v constant current driver correct? I have 3 boards id like to get to work

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It depends on drive current of each board, ask HLG about this really, maybe in their thread or directly to them. The boards can change a bit in spec depending on voltage bin (especially if its one of the older ones) so if you fins any markings with AX/AY/AZ or similar include this in your communication with them. They should be able to give you a graph or just some nrs re which voltage for what drive current.

Some 48V drivers, basicly the one with internal dimming, 48A type, can dim using voltage aswell ehich means you can stretch out a few extra volts using the internal pot from the driver which can help when numbers are close to 48, just a tad bit over.

LEDGARDENER has some basic cookie cutter designs as well as places to source from. , probably most of which has been mentioned.

Depends where your from also... like if your from Australia I might recommend cutter.au as they have a crazy amount of options

I haven't used them in a while, but I ordered a bunch of stuff from DigiKey when I built my lights. Arrow is a good source, too, as a couple of folks already mentioned.