The difference between rope light vs strip light

In today's market, due to the product names haven't been standardized, the names of various LED light strips are a bit confusing. According to the input voltage, LED strip lights can be classified into high voltage LED strip lights and low voltage strip lights. Due to the high-volt LED strip are commonly sealed by protection tube, which makes it look like a rope so that LED Rope Light is its another well-known name. Therefore, in this post, we are actually talking about the difference between high and low voltage LED strip lights.

IP65 waterproof LED rope light

LED rope light i.e. high voltage LED light strip is a flexible LED light fixture directly driven by high voltage alternating current without the adaptor. The rope light is completely wrapped in the insulating sleeve, for its high working voltage is dangerous. Although it will result in the light strips' sizes increasing, it also improves their dust and water protection rating. In addition, the high voltage AC direct driving mode can save a lot of cost of power supplies, and let the LED strip can be connected longer length in series. In order to control the heat production, high voltage strips' power cannot be high as the low voltage strips, resulting in the relatively low brightness.

Low voltage LED strips are commonly driven by direct currents, such as 5V, 12V, 24V, etc, having really high safety and stability. The regular low-volt lights have no waterproof processing, their PCB direct expose in the air, which makes them have a good heat dissipation performance. Of course, they can also be manufactured to IP65, IP67, IP68 waterproof for outdoor use. Thanks to the excellent heat dissipating efficiency, low voltage LED strips can use higher power of SMD light sources and achieve higher brightness.

These are the main differences between the rope light and LED strip. MLDR ® is a LED lighting manufacturer, producing and selling all kinds of LED light strips.

NASA uses Osram's new LED grow lighting system - Phytofy RL

Not long ago, the German LED lighting giant Osram launched a new LED plant growth lighting system, named Phytofy RL. This lighting system is equipped with 6 individually controllable spectral channels to meet the research needs of researchers and institutions involved in plant growth. With the Phytofy RL system, users can change the color ratio and light intensity without changing the lamps to evaluate the growth of plants under different artificial light conditions.

LED grow lighting system

The six spectral channels of Phytofy RL are 385 nm, 450 nm, 521 nm, 660 nm, 730 nm, and 2,700 K warm white light. At the same time, the system is equipped with LED grow lights with extremely high luminous flux and uniform light distribution. Researchers can also use the system to precisely illuminate crops with specific wavelengths and intensity of light to selectively intervene in the metabolism of the crop, thereby controlling its yield, color, flavor, and other characteristics. After professional calibration, the system can also provide accurate illumination chart, eliminating the need to manually measure luminous flux. In addition, the system can also set different wavelength combinations in one illumination cycle.

Developed by OSRAM and plant biologists, this system software has an intuitive graphical interface that greatly facilitates user operations. The Phytofy RL system has been adopted by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Michigan State University.

Learning Firefly to improve LED luminous efficiency? The US research team has already done this.

Researchers at Penn State University in the United States have found that the luminous efficiency of LEDs can be improved by replicating the fire-emitting structure of fireflies.

Stuart (Shizhuo) Yin, an electrical engineering expert at Penn State University, pointed out that most commercial LEDs currently emit about 50% of their luminous efficiency. How to improve the so-called LED light extraction efficiency is one of the keys to research. They focus on how to extract from LEDs' Light.

LED asymmetric structure tech

The team found that light disappears when it is reflected backward, so fireflies and LEDs face similar challenges in releasing light. One solution for LEDs is to create a microstructure on its surface that is textured to reflect more light. However, the microstructure of most LED surfaces is symmetrical, with the same angle of inclination on each side.

Fireflies' lanterns also have microstructures, however, the researchers found that the microstructures were asymmetrical, with one side tilting at different angles. They also found that other insects that glowed had similar structures. In view of this, they decided to try to create a similar asymmetric structure on the LED surface.

Researchers have successfully created asymmetric microscopic pyramid structures on the LED surface to improve light extraction efficiency in two ways. First, the asymmetric pyramid structure has a large surface area that promotes more interaction of light with the surface, allowing less light to be absorbed. Later, when the light hits two different tilt angles of the asymmetric pyramid structure, the light reflection has more randomness, which means that the light reflects more.

By adopting this method, the LED light extraction efficiency is increased to 90%. The research team applied for a patent for the study and said they are seeking to work with relevant LED lighting manufacturers to promote the commercialization of the technology.

It is reported that the results of this study have been published in the journal Optik.