led light strip is fantastic for a wide range of lighting applications but today
we're going to go a stage further as we look at the Macau COB led light strip by Robus
Not often we get an ooh out of you gary no cop i'm all intrigued what is this called well cob or chip on
board which basically means an incredibly large amount of led chips placed on the strip so much
so that you think that light is a continuous line i've got some in the tank here right that
we'll come to later but let's have a closer look at what i mean when we think of cob so we've got
some down here yes yeah so let's start looking at our traditional led light strip that we're used to
seeing so we often talk about how many leds you can get per meter these are quite widely spaced
apart and here's some uh closer space to the parts so generally more leds means more light
yeah however the downside of that is obviously in some applications you can obviously see the spots
of light yeah we can if i can just move it around a little bit see those it's blue as well isn't it
considering we've got like a yellow phosphorus on the top there isn't it yeah so the camera is
actually picking up how leds work so underneath an led is actually a blue led chip which has applied
a yellow phosphor which together create the white white and so blue and yellow make white yeah yeah
so then let's step to our cob strip so i'll have a look at the unlit here so this is an ip67 version
so you can see this continuous line of phosphor right and underneath there are the led chips so if
you're looking closely on this one that has been dimmed incredibly low you can actually see those
blue led chips yeah you can and there is a lot of them in there isn't there when it's dimmed down so
we're not seeing that dot in effect are we so occasionally you can look up and see that dotting
effect with this one we won't see it no you won't see it here's one that's fully illuminated oh yeah
you can see our continuous line of light so is that why you've installed this chip on board
or cob i like the sound above our heads here then because obviously as i look up now and i look back
down at the camera i've got that dying effect have i yeah and that's it so that's uh obviously you
can use it in applications where you don't want to see the dots and a lot of people don't like
to see them but if you just have a closer look at what i've done above out here i've been busy
that's how i like that so i've installed two rows i've got the warm white and the uh cool whites off
three thousand and four thousand kelvin so we may do some color tuning uh in the future but there's
an incredible amount of light coming out of the cob strip which means you can use it for what i'd
call proper lighting applications so think of offices restaurants things like that where you
also probably want good color rendering as well right okay so for the keen eyed bunch you're on
that though because i've just panned around the room yes i did install the festoon lighting in
here so we were using that previously and a lot to suggest what we've got now is a lot better however
obviously you can see the chips and obviously they still make them robust so there must be another
application where we actually want the chips yeah so obviously yeah robust are making both
we've got the macau which is our chip on board we've also got the vegas so i suggest there's
a casino inspired theme or casino a city theme running through this product naming and we're like
that instead of part numbers yes but i've also installed the vegas in the cove behind us because
in applications like that where you can't see the led strip yeah you can you can obviously
uh use the individual discrete led solution you can play around with how many leds you have per
meter to get the light output right as well yeah so that links into what you say in a lot of our
videos on led strip it's smuggling lights in so while we've smuggled the light in here there's
no point having the chip on board there is it so much on that more conventional style of led strip
however when we start thinking about the light levels from it and then you've got maybe the
ones where the chips are seen we often put a diffuser on the top what's the effect then yeah
quite a significant effect yeah so you're right people use a diffuser for two things sometimes
environmental protection right so you don't want the leds to get damaged and sometimes it's
easy on the uh discrete solution you know imagine you're doing some cleaning you can go along and
you can damage the leds the good thing about the ip20 version i've got here is that silicon coating
across the the phosphor coating of the silicon it's very smooth lines okay yeah so you possibly
don't need an extrusion for mechanical detection we'd always suggest an extrusion to manage heat
increase longevity yeah things like that or if you you know if you want to build offsite and take it
that's where extrusions come in loads of profiles you can plaster in and do all those things
but sometimes people use the extrusion with a diffuser to get rid of the dotting effects
i'm going to demonstrate here how much a difference just putting a diffuser is in terms of
light output or reducing light output ah so you're suggesting then that once we set the diffuser on
there we're actually whatever we've designed that light to be we're going to change that light level
yeah and so we're using the diffuser to try and get rid of dots we're not here we're just going to
put it in front of our cob led strips okay so you can put something up here yeah yeah i'll just get
the light meter here going for us here so we can see all let's go right in the middle of the bench
okay so don't move it so there we go so right in the middle of bench we've got a light level of
950 lux which you know if you think in a typical office environment a consultant engineer often
design you'll often hear 500 lux on a working plane yeah we'll call this our working plane
not that much work necessarily goes on here um and i'll bring in this diffuser strip all right
so so you're going to clip that let's see you clip that on there i'll bring it in down here
and see what happens that light level so you're over the top of our led strip in here
and obviously there's our light meter hasn't moved and we've dropped it down
we've lost more than 140 lux haven't we so yeah different 10 20 30 depending on it and obviously
sometimes the further apart those leds are the more dense you go with the diffuser
which increases the light output loss so it's uh again if you so if you're using led strips for
what i'd call real clotting applications in terms of you want to do functional work under them a
cob strip is obviously a fantastic choice for that yeah and again you mentioned on it as well wiping
across the top of anything when you've got those chips exposed i've done it myself i've knocked a
few off yeah certainly it happens to us all um but also if that's not enough obviously you've got the
ip20 right there's also the outdoor version as well so this is ip67 it's been sitting in this
tank for a week because also along with this macau came this easy connector system that was used here
to do the connections and that connection system is absolutely fantastic even i could use it
and we'll recommend you check out the link in the description we are above ahead to see how you do
that yeah that is fantastically easy i'll just switch it off so you can see how this is made up
so again you can see the the cob led strip under there just has an additional silicon layer and
the high strength 3m adhesive tape on the back and that gets up to ip67 then doesn't it yeah that is
obviously the connectors you can make joining bits and in-line connections on this as well
okay super simple i recommend you check that video out there it is now uh obviously we're thinking
ip67 we're thinking outdoors actually there may be instances where i actually got too much light
too much light because there is depending on the color temperature up to 1460 lumens per meter
and that's what we're lighting this rumor with in here now and we've already shown we're at nearly
a thousand looks on eventually may have to turn it down so is this the dr emmett brown back of
the delorean that we've got down here is it yeah so along with uh yeah along with the macau led
strip um rob has sent us a range of controllers which have connected up here um so we've got
a one you can use with a smartphone app uh on wi-fi that was incredibly easy to set up
that's not normally something we say when we think about apps something i say we've
got a wireless controller here um so this is mains powered but it transmits uh wirelessly
obviously to the receiver module so there's no cabling interconnection between these no no and
then i've got this remote control version here see so that's on the regular vegas strip so do that
again for me yep just dip that down so we're on this one yeah here yeah just that one at the top
and you're addressing that okay that's good so then i'll repeat it with our wall better
controller that i've got attached to our uh cob strip right so that's going to change that one so
the cool white so we'll go across the cool white one there now you'll see yeah
okay i've dimmed out materials gives the beans on it okay so that's at full brightness yeah
yeah so that's uh yeah so if you if you are outdoors and you're using that because obviously
you don't want to see uh spots from a conventional lead strip you don't want to use an extrusion
um yeah you can obviously put the micara but you probably would need to turn it down a bit yeah
because of the super brightness that those extra leds give you and obviously if you're dimming leds
you're also saving energy at full power this led strip is 14 watts per meter which obviously
if you can do your maths puts you above 100 lumens per watt a few other points to know about
its application the reel itself is a 20 meter reel right and i found as i was working with that doing
the square you get halfway down to really get a little reminder that you need to order some more
i suspect that's for the cutting stations that robust have it out in the wholesalers
but one important point to note this is resistive controlled leds and at the power levels we're
operating obviously we'll get a voltage drop at the strip itself maximum length per power supply
should be five meters after that you'll have to run the strip in parallel oh right okay so
it's pretty technical but thank you for that technical but so what i did in this room so around
here we've got uh an an eight eight meter length uh so i just fed it from uh one corner and went
out in two directions on each leg i've therefore got uh four meters i've got my maths today and
i've paired them back up to the two uh robust uh led power supplies again constant motors 24 volts
uh behind you there okay and obviously one on the one on the cool white and one on the uh warm white
yeah and you can see the two different colors as well yeah you're quite impressed with that
it's twice you've referenced it in this video so i think you're quite pleased with yourself
for this one i'm quite pleased because you know we've got quite a low height ceiling in here
and obviously it's a great solution for that isn't it i haven't got any ceiling clutter no
that's an 11 millimeter profile of standard in i'm not going to put the diffuser on it's
not causing us any glare issues here i think this yeah this macau cob strip light is is a go-to for
me yeah and it is yeah when you can just see it compared to the dots and we we're not suggesting
that's a bad thing it's all about where you're going to implement your led strip but for us
this has solved an amazing problem well is it new to you had you heard the word
cobb before this chip on board before we started this video if you had please leave your comments
what are you doing with it at the minute if you hadn't have you thought about some
applications it can use for this Robus Led strip please leave them all below and i'm
sure gordon and not me will get back to all of them gary will get back to his call on the cob