(engine ticking)
(electricity buzzing)
- In a continuation of a series of videos on LED strip,
something he likes to call LED tape,
today, we're gonna look at the drivers, and we're gonna
be looking at the symbols on those drivers.
Before I kick him in to tell us all those symbols,
I'm gonna take a little bit of slack off you,
Gordon, and I'm gonna go first.
So, we're ready?
- Ready.
- There's plenty to choose from.
I'm going with this one.
This one here is a square within a square.
That's the symbol for double insulated.
Gordon, the rest are yours.
- Ah. Well done. - Took the difficult one.
- He's got his glasses on.
I knew he was going technical.
All right.
Well, do you know what a circle
in a circle is? - No.
What is a circle within a circle?
- A circle in a circle is reinforced insulation
and it can be used inside something
that's double insulated.
- Okay. So there you go.
You're off and running.
I've kicked you in.
I've done the first one.
They're all easy, the rest of them.
Where are you going next?
- Well, let's start with probably one everybody knows,
and that's the CE mark.
It's on everything from toys to LED drivers.
And that's a manufacturer's declaration
that the product meets all known
European regulations related to the product.
- So the manufacturer says their own product's
really good, put that sticker on.
Is that what it's saying?
- Yeah. Okay.
Poacher and gamekeeper in one.
Yeah. The manufacturer says that.
- Is that possibly got a little bit of wiggle room in there?
We see a lot of products from overseas
and online retailers.
Can anyone stick that sticker on their stuff?
- Well, let's just say the CE mark perhaps is
a little bit tarnished these days
because there's a lot of products that has
it on that may not have been fully tested
at the laboratory.
- Okay.
We're not suggesting this one isn't,
because we've got a lot of other symbols that back up
the CE mark.
Can you explain some of those to us?
- Yeah.
So the one is,
the one probably looking at for Europe, is this one here.
The ENEC mark.
Now that means it's been tested
by an independent laboratory to meet all
of those standards required for the European market.
- And we like that.
So we're saying an independent person's taken that driver,
checked it against the standards, bang, sticker goes on.
- Yeah.
And that's a traceable standard so it's there.
- Yeah. So that's good.
- And the little number next to it.
So there's a 10 there.
That will tell you what country it's been actually
tested in as well.
- Oh. That's good.
Does that continue on to any others?
- Well, yes.
Okay.
These drivers look like an Egyptian tomb.
There's that many symbols on here.
But with a travel theme in mind, all of these other ones,
it's been traveling around the world picking
up certification stamps from lots of different countries.
So the Chinese version of CE is the three Cs.
The Australian version is the C tick.
And then there's some more text-based ones here
for India, and there's another
for the Asian Economic Community there as well.
- And all of those symbols you just described
there meant that in that country,
they were independently checked against the standards
before that sticker or the symbol was given.
- Yeah.
So that's either to their standards,
they may differ slightly from Europe, but yeah,
they've had the.
Possibly the glaring one missing is
UL, which you'd expect for the U.S. market.
- Okay.
- But that's normally because their way of looking
at things doesn't necessarily reflect the way things
are done in Europe and the rest of the world.
And a much lower voltage.
- Okay.
So here we go then.
That's took a big chunk out of the number
of symbols you've got here.
You've talked a lot now.
I'm gonna do another one.
Give yourself a little breather.
(Gordon sighs)
Here we go. Are you ready?
This one here that looks like a wheelie bin
with a cross through it, means that you cannot,
after life expectancy has expired,
just chuck it in your standard recycling bin
and you'll need to take it to a specialist
to have it recycled. (clicks fingers)
That one's mine.
Carry on.
- Didn't realize we had such an expert
on WEEE in the eFIXX community.
- (laughs) Okay.
- Where are you going next, Gordon?
- Okay.
So let's think of one that really
the electrician installer should be probably most
useful to them and that's this one here,
that looks like a top hat in a circle.
- That looks like a Lego character's head to me.
- Okay. You can have the Lego person.
So that means this is an independent driver.
- So what? It lives on its own?
- Yeah. Essentially.
You could think of it that way.
It can be used outside of a lighting fixture.
- Right. Okay.
So it can be used outside of a lighting.
Is there any other clues to suggest it also can be
used outside of a lighting fixture?
- So you might want to put this,
say you've built a plastic corner in a room,
where you're gonna put it in the ceiling.
- Yeah.
- What's important, you don't wanna touch
the terminals and if you've got cables,
you don't wanna be able to pull them out easily.
So you'll see this driver has end caps, and those end
caps also function as cord grips as well.
- So that's quite an important symbol.
So that's the character that looks remarkably like
a head of a LEGO figure,
suggests that this can be outside the actual--
- Yeah.
And sometimes you'll see,
particularly in the early days of LEDs, people would
just buy a normal power supply that was meant to be
built into something, and just throw it in the roof
and you can go up there, touch the terminals,
pull the cables out.
Yeah.
Not brilliant.
- Okay. You're on a roll.
I don't wanna slow you down.
Keep going.
- Okay.
So we'll look at the next one here.
We've got two Ms. - Okay.
- M and M. - Yeah.
Nice chocolate treat.
- I thought that was Smarties.
- No. No, no, no.
- The American version of Smarties.
- I like the nut ones.
So what do two Ms mean?
- So two Ms, believe it or not,
means it can be mounted on furniture.
- Right. Okay.
So I can take my driver and put it on the arm of a chair?
Or do we mean, I build something like it to, say,
be held in place with, and we class that as furniture?
- Yeah.
Well, if you wanna put it on the arm of your chair,
you can do, Gary.
If that floats your boat.
But I'm suggesting that probably,
people might wanna mount it in a bookcase
or something like that, or in a light box,
or something made of wood or other materials.
- Okay. And that's the two Ms.
Okay.
That's new to me.
Any other ones linked to that?
- So the link to that is
you'll see there's a number here.
There's 120 degrees in what looks like a give way sign.
- Okay. And what does that mean?
- So that is the maximum temperature
that this driver will get up to in worst case conditions.
So, say, a fault.
So perhaps you've short circuited the output.
- So if I create a piece of furniture to hold the driver,
I've gotta obviously make sure that that can withstand
a minimum of 120 degrees and not internally combust,
in other words.
- Yeah. Exactly.
And that number, it changes by the driver.
So some of these other drivers, there's one here, 110.
- Right. - Yeah.
It is different so don't take the 120 degrees
as the absolute maximum for them all.
- Is that your last moment talking about temperature,
or have we got some more stuff on temperature?
- So temperature, let's have a think.
Well, you may remember if you've watched that,
I hope you have,
we did a video about looking at temperature of LED tape.
Something he likes to call, LED strip.
- LED strip.
Whatever.
So the TC point, that's basically the temperature
you don't want to exceed, and again,
the manufacturer's given you a reference point
for the driver to measure that.
- Okay.
Is it affected by ambient temperature?
- Yeah.
So along with the TC point,
you'll also see ambient temperature.
- Right. - So obviously
there is a correlation.
Higher ambient, you'd expect that temperature
to be higher.
But this is more useful.
So say you'd built an enclosure and you'd put lots
of drivers in there.
- Yeah.
- And you measured an ambient temperature, 40 degrees.
- Okay.
- Obviously, those drivers could be stacked up.
The one at the top probably will be hotter
than the one at the bottom.
- And therefore, we could have premature failure
of the driver.
You try and send it back to the manufacturer.
And they might replicate your enclosure, and suggest
that actually you'd gone beyond the temperature
of the actual drivers themselves.
- Yeah. That's exactly what they'd do.
If you'd had lots of failures,
they'd try to replicate what you've built,
and if you've gone above that TC point,
you'd struggle to win that argument.
- Is there any more on there that you can grab me off?
- Grab you off, let's have a think
of this EL symbol. - Okay.
What's that gonna stand for?
- That's emergency lighting, Gary.
- It's actually relevant.
The letters actually mean something.
Okay.
So emergency lighting.
- So that is, it can be connected to a DC power supply,
so something you might see on a central battery system.
- Wow. So do we get many of those on?
I remember back in the day when I first started out,
we had a battery storage room at the college I was
at and they showed us that for the emergency lighting.
Is that something very common in the UK?
- Well, it was before electronics, Gary.
Times have moved on since then.
So, no.
In the UK, we mainly use self-contained emergency
lights with a Tupperware box on the roof.
But in Europe,
central battery systems are still pretty popular.
- Okay.
That's a good point to make.
You're running out now, I think. Are you?
- I think we've nearly exhausted it.
So well, there's DALI. - Okay.
- So, DALI.
You a fan of DALI?
Impressionist painter.
- Yes. Yes.
And what else could it mean there?
- (laughs) That's obviously
digitally addressable lighting interface.
Trips off the tongue.
We'll be looking at that in a later series of videos
when we look at dimming.
So that's a way of dimming LEDs.
- Okay.
Anything else in there or have we covered 'em all now?
- I think we're almost through on them all.
- Okay.
So as always, we love to hear people's comments,
me and Gordon.
So make sure you make those comments below.
You might have come across a symbol that certainly
I won't know.
Maybe Gordon will.
And maybe we can help you out with that.
But again, as always,
make sure you leave those comments
below and we'll see you on the next video.
(engine ticking)
(electricity buzzing)