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In Mediterranean countries, oleanders grow wild, but in Central Europe, they can only survive if kept in pots and overwintered in a protected place. – For now!

When you first get your oleander and enjoy the first blooms, you water it, feed it, overwinter it, and you’ll have a pretty but leggy plant. People will tell you to cut it back, but you might be afraid to, seeing that flowers grow at the ends of the branches. If you cut the ends, there won’t be any place for flowers to grow. Eventually, the time will come when it no longer fits in its overwintering spot, and you’ll have to prune it drastically.

And behold! – It becomes bushier, denser, and though it blooms later, it rewards you with even more flowers.

It’s easier if you have several oleanders, allowing you to cut back half of them drastically every other year. Over the years and decades, you can have oleanders with very characteristic trunks.

Continue reading Oleanders for creating a mediterranean garden atmosphere →

Of course, it can happen by accident that we publish a picture of a product that has nothing to do with reality, but it can also be intentional. The problem is that RGB LED strips can emit light in many colors — practically any color of the rainbow. This puts manufacturers in a difficult position when they have to showcase an RGB strip with just one photo while it’s lit. To convey everything an RGB LED strip is capable of, they resort to various image manipulations. This manipulated image is provided to distributors and is also featured on the product’s box (if it has one). Photoshopped images like these are created:

Many customers believe that these LED strips can actually produce such lighting.

In the above image manipulation, we see stunning combinations of RGB LED strip colors. Unfortunately, these are not real; they are mere manipulations. There are, of course, LED strips capable of illuminating in every color simultaneously, but these are not them.

Products sold with such photoshopped images not only belong to the group of cheaper and less reliable RGB LED strips, where even the seller doesn’t know what the product is capable of because they’ve never seen it in person or, if they have, haven’t tested it. What I don’t want to delve into right now is that, in many cases, not only can’t these RGB sets achieve the lighting suggested in the pictures, but buyers frequently report issues with improperly sized, overheating, melting RGB controllers, and exploding power supplies, as well as poorly soldered LED strip connections in their product reviews. However, this article is not about these problems; it’s about the misleading representation of lighting experiences and ultimately deception.

What’s wrong with these depictions of RGB LED strips?

Continue reading A disappointment may occur if you believe any RGB LED strip photo to be real →

The current going to the LED strip does not pass through the electronics of the digital LED strip controllers (they are connected in parallel). As a result, there is no performance limit in the same sense as with an analog RGB controller, where the manufacturer specifies the maximum current output of the controller, which cannot be exceeded without adding a signal amplifier. In the case of DRGB, such a limit does not exist; at most, the cross-sections of the wires soldered to the controller can be limiting factors. But this can easily be circumvented in the case of digital running lights due to the parallel connection, as it is enough to power the strips, and the controller will also get power from the strip itself, thus the wire cross-section of the controller won’t matter, since only the current necessary for the operation of the controller will load it.

If we only look at the two sets shown in the picture above. It is completely illogical that the right set, operating 150 LEDs on a 5-meter roll in full white light mode, has almost twice the consumption as the left one, which operates 300 LEDs. In contrast, in colorful running light mode, the consumption is proportional to the number of LEDs, but surprisingly, the left one can boost in white light, while the right one falls short as expected. WHAT IS THIS ANOMALY?

Background:

Continue reading When the running light RGB LED strip seems weak, even though it’s just the digital controller being tricky →

Just as various interior design styles draw inspiration from the trends of bygone eras, so too does the nostalgia for older lighting forms emerge. With pendant lights, chandeliers, and other traditional-looking lamps, the variations seem endless. However, the question arises: what light sources should we use to ensure these lights appear authentic while also being energy-efficient? The so-called Edison bulbs from around the 1920s evoke the most emotion among those interested in older styles. These bulbs had relatively weak light, glowing dimly with a nearly golden hue. The plentifully used filaments, arranged in various winding methods, created uniquely beautiful shapes. Because they didn’t glow too brightly, we could admire the play of the filaments. The glass bulbs protecting the filaments also came in much more varied shapes compared to today’s mass-produced world.

Note: While we mention vintage style in the title, the fixtures in the images are not. Focus on the light sources, not the chandelier!

This is why the old bulbs had a strongly yellowish light; we could look into them because energy efficiency was not a concern – longevity was more important. Energy efficiency? They were happy to have electric lighting at all. They glowed weakly, with a color temperature between 1800-2600 Kelvin. For the sake of authenticity, similar bulbs are still made today with similarly energy-wasting consumption. If someone chooses these light sources for their entire home and relies on them to meet modern lighting needs, they might be surprised by the significant increase in their electricity bill.

Continue reading Vintage style enthusiasts don’t have to give up energy-efficient lighting →

We could instantly say that, of course, the 24 Volt one. With twice the voltage and the same Amperage, you can transfer twice the power.

What does this mean in practice for LED strips?

Advantages of 24 Volt RGB LED Strips:

• The maximum current load is specified for an LED controller.
  • For example, if an LED controller is 12 Amperes, you can connect up to 144 Watts of 12 Volt strip to it, meaning you can connect 10 meters of a 14.4 Watt per meter RGB LED strip.
  • In contrast, if your LED strip with the same power is 24 Volts, you can connect up to 288 Watts of LED strip to it.
  • So, for the previously mentioned 14.4 Watt per meter, 24 Volt RGB strip, you can connect 20 meters. Yes, this is a basic calculation method, but the point is clear.
  • This example also means that if you are indeed using a 12 Ampere RGB LED controller and want to install 20 meters of RGB LED strip, you will need 2 RGB controllers (or one controller and a signal amplifier) for the 12 Volt strip to operate 20 meters. In contrast, if you use a 24 Volt strip, one such RGB controller will suffice.
• The most important advantage of the 24 Volt strip is that for the same circuit cross-section strip with the same consumption, you will experience less loss on the LED strip.
• LEDs farther from the power connection point on a 24 Volt LED strip lose less brightness than on a 12 Volt strip.
  • This means that an evenly strong light experience can be more easily achieved with a 24 Volt LED strip, as you need approximately half as many connections for the same illumination. (It is generally true, – obviously depending on the parameters of the specific LED strip – that usually 2-5 meter sections of LED strip need to be created to establish power wire connections at both ends. If you do this over longer sections, the middle of the strip may light up weaker – even visibly.)
  • With the use of 24 Volt LED strips, connection points can be spaced out, meaning you can create 5-10 meter sections of LED strip and only need to establish power connection points at their ends.
  • Moreover, along the LED strip, you need to create a power backbone wire to the connection points, which for RGB is 4-core. Naturally, with 24 Volts, for the same power transfer, you can use a thinner (half the cross-section) wire, which can make installation easier in tight spaces.
• Obviously, for smaller systems of a few meters, the advantage of 24 Volt systems does not appear. However, if you want to hide RGB LED lighting in a ceiling plasterboard cornice of a room, which may require 15-30 or more meters of LED strip, the advantages of 24 Volt systems are not negligible.

Disadvantages of 24 Volt RGB LED Strips:

Continue reading Comparison of 12 Volt and 24 Volt RGB LED strips – Which one should I buy? →

Blue light is present in sunlight (which is cool white – just to heighten the concerns). Moreover, blue is one of the three primary colors. Without it, you can’t mix turquoise, purple, or even trendy pink – and white wouldn’t exist either. So, the sun shines with all the colors of the rainbow, which are filtered (and refracted) by the atmosphere, reflected by the environment, and the result is a clear noon sunlight – cool white.

In the image below, you can see the spectrum of daylight sunlight: – around 5600 Kelvin

I stole the images, drew on them, edited them to make them somewhat uniform in appearance.

You can see somewhat similar images in many places, but I dare not claim any of them to be absolutely accurate, and depending on environmental conditions, every such measurement will be slightly different. So, the light of the noon sun consists of such strength variations and such color spectrums.

Continue reading Didn’t you know anything about the harmful effects of blue light until LED and fear-mongering journalism appeared? →

Manufacturers of single-color LED strips generally produce only the three primary colors: red, green, and blue, with some also making yellow. Pink is quite rare, and purple is even rarer. However, some people need orange or turquoise LED strips.
The answer to this is to buy an RGB LED strip and mix the desired shade yourself. Some people do not want a remote-controlled system; they just want the light to always be orange when they turn it on. For them, it seems unnecessary to buy a system capable of displaying all the colors of the rainbow, performing lighting effects, and dimming the lights when they only need one color. Why buy it if these features will never be used?

There are two solutions, but both require either an RGB LED strip or two different colored LED strips stuck next to each other.

Continue reading Purple LED strip, pink LED strip, blood orange LED strip, turquoise LED strip, goose green LED strip – but where from? →

Let’s face it, this question is important for interiors decorated in Mediterranean, rustic, or retro styles as well. The further back in time we go, the more attention we need to pay to choosing the right LED light source.

How vintage should a LED light source be?

We can agree that only those LED types that imitate filaments are worth considering. If not, then it should be something that mimics a glowing surface, such as a flame dancing behind an opal surface, which can also be classified as vintage style.

Vintage-style light sources match vintage-style interiors.
Continue reading What kind of LED light source should we choose for our vintage-style home? →

Background:

COG LEDs (Chip On Glass), which are LEDs built on glass or sapphire strips, have been known for years and are increasingly efficient. Their advantage is that achieving circular illumination is much easier with them than with SMD packaged LEDs, which often rely on opal covers to enhance light distribution with varying degrees of success. However, COG LEDs have the disadvantage that less light reaches the direction of the filaments. To solve this problem, Filament LEDs are placed in multiple positions under the cover, or we must choose an appropriate light source with the knowledge that less light reaches the filament direction.

This problem of “less light in the filament direction” could be solved if the LED filament were flexible, thus allowing shadowed areas to be eliminated by appropriate bending.

…and yes, there is a flexible filament LED.

Continue reading Flexible filament LED – for a complete vintage atmosphere →

Any LED strip can flicker or not. It depends on how it is operated.

How does this work?

Continue reading Which LED strip flickers and which does not? →