Lumen (lm) - Lumen is the measurement of brightness as perceived to the human eye. We are accustomed to using watts to measure the “brightness of light” because of incandescent lighting use. Today, we use lumen. Lumen is the most important variable when choosing your strip light. Thehigher the number, the brighter the light will be. Ensure that the strips you choose are bright enough for your application.
AC - Alternating Current. This is the electricity that is used in most homes and commercial spaces. It’s often referred to as line voltage and numberdiffers from country to country. US line voltage is typically 90V-220V, whereas it often averages higher in Europe.
DC - Direct Current. Most LED strips on the market use low-voltage DC. A transformer or low-voltage battery is often required to step-down the AC voltage to a suitable level for the LED strips, which is normally 12V or 24V DC.
CRI - Color Rendering Index is the measurement of how colors look under a light source when compared with sunlight. Having information on the CRI of an LED strip light is important because you want to make sure that colors are being accurately represented by the light source.
LED Pitch - The distance between the individual chips on a strip. It is absolutely crucial to understand the importance that pitch plays in your project. The shorter the pitch, the more uniform the light tends to be and the less spotting tends to happen.
Chip Size - LED chips are all not all equal. What is the difference between 3528, 3014, and 5050 LEDs ? The four digits represent the size of the chips in millimeters. For example, the 3528 chip is 3.5 mm X 2.8mm. Some chips are brighter than others and some have special uses and restrictions.This can made different kinds of led strip light.
CCT - Not all white light appears the same. Correlated Color temperature (CCT) defines the color appearance of a white light. CCT is defined in degrees Kelvin. Most white lights fall in a spectrum between 1800K and 6500K. When falling below 3000K, the light looks noticeably warmer like a candle. On the other end of the spectrum, the lights have a blue-ish tint and cooler tone when passing above 6500K. Some color temperatures will better suit your design than others. Choose complementary highlighting tones and look at example photos to find which you feel will look the best.
LED Binning - Simply put, binning is the process of grouping LEDs during production so that they match with LEDs of the same color sector. For consistent light and color output, we make sure that the LEDs are always ordered from the same bin.
LED - A Light Emitting Diode (LED) is a solid-state semiconductor device that converts electrical energy directly into light.
Solid-state lighting - Lighting devices that do not contain moving parts or parts that can break, rupture, shatter, leak, or contaminate the environment. LEDs do not use electrical filaments or gasses to produce light.
Luminous efficacy - This is calculated by measuring the lumen output and then dividing that number by watts. For example, a strip that has a lumen output of 300lm/ft and a wattage draw of 3w/ft has an efficiency of 100lm/W.
TM-30 - The Fidelity Index measures how closely the observed light can render colors like the sun, using 99 color samples. Gamut Index - How saturated or desaturated colors are (aka how intense the colors are).
Color Vector Graphic - Measures which colors are saturated/desaturated and whether there is a hue shift in any of the 16 color bins.
CQS - Color Quality Scale is an alternative to the unsaturated CRI measurement colors. There are 15 highly-saturated colors that are used to compare chromatic discrimination, human preference, and color rendering.
IP Rating - This is a rating system that defines the ability of a product to be able to work in different environments. IP is an acronym for “Ingress Protection“. It is a measurement of the protection an item will have against solid objects (dust, sand, dirt, etc.) and liquids.
IP65 - Water resistant. “Protected against water jets from any angle” *Do NOT submerge IP65 LED lights. These are not waterproof.
IP67 - Water resistant plus.“Protected against the events of temporary submersion (10 minutes)” *Do NOT submerge IP67 LED lights for extended periods, these are not waterproof.
IP68 - Waterproof.“Protected against the events of permanent submersion up to 3 meters”
About Author
JerryHu
Founder of Lightstec.Engineering degree.More than 13 years working experience in led lighting business.Familiar with producing led lighting products.This blog share you knowledge and solution in led lighting.Welcome sourcing led lights from China.
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professional led blog. Keep going
Hi Will, Thanks !