experiences with cheap led?

Hi,
have you made good or bad experiences with cheap leds? All I read about here is cree cree cree and so on.

Im talking about stuff like this:
http://www.ebay.de/itm/110834112895?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

10x 660nm, 3W, , 80lm, 17$!

any comments r welcome

Also, as theoretically either the good stuff happens exactly @ 660nm nor 630nm whats the hype about that binning?

Most folks are wanting to go Led for two reasons - operating costs and heat. Higher quality LEDs like Cree and Philips produce a good amount of light on spectrum (for we growers, the best measurement for good amount of light is umol) for each watt. Even within the same manufacturer quality can vary greatly and thus they provide bins where they separate the various qualities. The difference between bins is large and the difference between a quality manufacturer and others is tremendous​ One of the ways that you can tell a good manufacturer and good chips from the terrible quality ones, is that the manufacturer will provide you with spec sheets for quality LEDs. Go ahead and ask for a spec sheet for the ones that you linked to.

It wont let me upload the datasheet, because the drawings and Diagramms make it too big. seller sent it via email.
Some info from the datasheet.
Any info there that shows they r "terrible", considering they cost like 1/5th of a cree/or similar?

Is binning also about the General Quality? i thought its just about categories /selecting led fitting the ordered wavelength more exactly/ with less tolerance.

P/N: SG-HP3R-S​

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also I did the math comparing Cree XP G White 6000K vs Chineseimport 6000K 3W, also considering powerconsumption costs for 3 Years. Chinese is still much cheaper...
So, are there any other downsides?

Did you factor in higher failure rates for the diodes?

The consensus on the forums is the same as life, you get what you pay for.

Even high end LED's can have issues. Ultimately it's up to you to make the decision. When you get a string of failed cheap LED's during flower(or complete failure), don't bitch about it here.

Thank you both for answering.

I mean for the LEDs I compared, of course the Cree was better Datawise, but calculating and comparing the costs it wasnt too overwhelming.

Did you factor in higher failure rates for the diodes?

Click to expand...

I did not, as i dont have any experiences nor data regarding that. I could not find any posts on google regarding high failure rates of satis leds or "satisleds quality sucks"...Id love to see more info on that.
It would be great to see a comparison, but i have not found one yet.

regards

Are there companies that make horticulture based panels with that brand LED?(that you know of)

One of the problems with LED's is that the wiring is often done in series. So, a failure of one diode equals a bank of diodes with an open circuit. If everything could be run in parallel, you would only have singular failure, or module failure. My panel has modules of 6 LED's. If one failed, the rest would continue to work.

Hmmmm, do you think they're gonna honor my 5 year warranty on this ? Anyone got 75-150 bucks to ship it back to China ?



Do yourself, and your wallet, a favor and save the few hundred bucks you'll waste staggering around China and buy something that you know works.

I am experimenting with cheap leds and pcbs at the moment. I know i havent been using them too long so i cant judge on the lifespan but they seem alright for the money, but like everyone else has said you are probably better saving some money. I bought a cheap chinese ufo that lasted about 2 hours before breakdown(dodgy pcb apparently). They replaced it but... now i retro-fitted a cheap 24 led pcb with 3w leds to the old ufo and so far no problems but im only running the 12hrs a day. My next project will probaby be with crees but we will see.

Thanks, I appreciate the input.

To be honest I already bought the cheap LEDs and this is like justfieng my shopping afterwards lol. And now there is the phase with some regrets...

I just looked at the datasheets and did some math, there i concluded that it needs about 2-3 years to make up for the higher initial cost.
I also found people using them with great success, but then i found points like "decrease in luminosity over time" regarding these satis leds... no mentioning about it in the datasheet, i can guess why
-like a "wtf" luminosity decrease over one year.
I just can hope those people did something wrong regarding cooling
the leds.
This is just about a little private growing Operation, so no hard feelings if one string goes black, if its not the ccs i could probably fix its problems within minutes once i notice it.

Jimjim, how Long have you been using them. Could make a Little test and compare the brightness of one of those heavily used and compare it to one fresh out of the box? That d be great
You got satis as well, or some others? And which? Any success with those?

FranJan, what happened there in that picture? One Led out of how many, did that occure often? whats the type and seller of that led?
Is that a limiting resistor? Even if the fail, how was the growing success?

Actually that is a NW and it is happening on all my NWs on that board. It's heat based degradation of the LEDs protective cap. I can pull it off but then the gel that they use to protect the LED, and might have the phosphor in it, will just degrade. Maybe I could find some replacement caps to fit it but I'm really done with this panel and have some plans for it soon. And those are Zener diodes that are used to keep the series running in case an individual LED fails and it's a little over a year old LED Star 5x60. The panel was designed to work with my 2 BS 240s and while it did boost the output of my grow, it did so at a co$t to my ebill and was replaced by a VIPAR A300 less than a year after purchase. Now a VIPAR is just a solid Chinese based panel, but it blew the 5x60 away. There are many reasons for that but one is important in your case and that is a 5x60 uses cheap signage grade LEDs and that they're just meant to be bright but not very efficient. Growers want diodes with high efficacy and high CRIs and these cost more but they also produce more. Without the ability to accurately test your LEDs, Chinese diodes are a crapshoot. Will they work? Most of the time yes but you might as well use CFLs and T5s which are more efficient than your average Chinese LED, and last just as long . Now if you can somehow figure out how to buy direct from Epistar or Bridgelux then you could build a good Chinese panel but it's just so hard to find a reputable dealer when it comes to Chinese diodes. I mean how can you tell if your 730nm is really 730 without the ability to test them yourself. That's an expensive investment for that piece of mind. And I don't think the Chinese give a f*ck about the BBB .

Someone once wrote on here that Chinese diodes are great for experimenting with, and I think that is a really good way of looking at them. Good Luck.