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
