A time or two I said 'short' when I meant to say 'open'. When an LED fails it typically fails as an open circuit, not a short. Apologizes if this causes any confusion.
This certainly explains my experience, which involved getting warranty replacements and now having half of them out once again. This video was great for letting me know that there really is no saving them, I really will have to just buy new ones because it'll continue to be a cascading problem no matter what I do. Thanks for the breakdown.
Your tear-down and analysis are excellent. A major failure in design and manufacturing is not bonding the LED strips to the aluminum extrusion for heat dissipation. As for lighting a low ceiling room, I have yet to find a suitable replacement for a bare/exposed T5 fluorescent tube. Extreme uniformity in light distribution both lateral and vertical, and lowest glare possible. I prefer 3500K CCT. Your 5000K CCT may be better for white balance in video recording. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for your kind words! I was hoping to find a good alternative to T5 bulbs but I'm not sure there's a budget friendly LED option out there yet. I do like the warmer lighting myself but you are correct, I've found the 5000K is better for video.
Cool. I had been considering changing my 4' florescent shop lights to LEDs. Seeing this though has made me reconsider that. My florescent lights work just fine and as my shop is painted white I have plenty of light in there. I guess if it ain't broke I shouldn't fix it, lol. Heck, one bank of them is probably as old as I am with a big sand ballast resistor in it and still works fine.
Super cool video, thanks for this. If I remember my high school electronics course, would using bridge rectifiers then mean in this case that the lights would be flickering at 120 Hz? I think you may have helped me figure out why I get lines in a 1/20 shutter speed time lapse.
Unless you can find strips with a better design I feel that the same things is going to happen and they'll eventually fail again. Also due to the power supply design not just any led strip can be put in.
I bought a 12 pack of 4ft Barrina lights in 2020 for around $80. All are still going strong in my 2 car garage wood shop. They are used about 20 hours per week. Hard to beat the price for what you get here.
Your failure rate is pretty nuts actually. I have about 50 of these (8ft form factor) that have been in operation for 160hrs/wk for nearly 6 years and haven't experienced a single failure. No climate control and they sit directly under a black tar roof where the ambient temperature usually ranges from 90-130F. They aren't the same "manufacturer" but they are the same design because I tore down a spare. It might be possible that there was some variation in the LEDs (quality) or maybe they managed to get the power supply incorrect.
Wow, that's pretty crazy how much longer your lights lasted. Sounds like there's a difference for sure, I just wonder if it is the LEDs, the power supply, or the routing/layout. Hmm, I may have to do a teardown on one of those longer ones.
