Having been inspired by this thread:
…and the fact that I only have one working CFL left in a 30 x 12ft workshop, I really want to build some LED strips for bright, instant on, efficient workshop lighting.
Now, the cheap generic emitters linked to in the thread are tempting, but I’m not confident about the reliability of the specs and ratings being correct, so wondered what members thoughts were on the subject…cheap generic emitters, or something more well known?
I think it depends on what you’re going to be using the light for. Will you need high CRI so you can judge colors accurately? Do you want the harsh brightness of Cool White or would the nearly incandescent glow of Warm White be better? In any case, I recommend high quality emitters, if you’re building it yourself. If you want a lot of light from a single emitter, spend the money on some Cree XHP-70 emitters on 12V SinkPads.
If you just want some LED strip lighting, there are loads of 110v AC options available already. I even saw one kind of LED strip that has color temperature mixing. They put a row of Warm White emitters, a row of Neutral White, and a row of Cool White, and a slide dimmer glides you through smoothly from all the way warm to all the way cool, with blending in between. The world of LED lighting is getting more interesting all the time!
I wouldn’t mess around with DIY stuff at 230V, if you screw up it could be your last time. And I wouldn’t call the cheap LED drivers reliable or safe to rely on. If you have decent lamps there just replace them with good retrofits from known brands. (Phillips, Osram, Ikea if you want to) They light up quick, are cheap and last some time. You can even get 1000+ Lumens with good CRI and a decent pricetag.
If you want do diy pay attentions to electric safety, only certified drivers: Meanwell makes some decent ones.
System voltage has to be below 60V IIRC (at least here and the regulations will be pretty much the same). All contacts isolated and impossible to touch. Leds in series plus optics on aluminium U-profile is a way to go.
Strips are not really efficient but work too.
EDIT: Just remembered something I found a couple weeks ago
This seller on aliexpress offers some 50cm 5360 Al modules with 12V DC and milky cover, that could be a really nice option. Make sure to use a high quality 12v power supply. 5*50cm less than 15$ Link
Cooling could be better or improved but it looks okay from distance, cri and brightness is unknown but might be worth a try. Those aluminium could be used otherwise if it sucks.
But after all diy would be more expensive than propper retrofits I guess. At least thats what it was for all the stuff I wanted to do at home and in the sheds.
I’m glad to have provided some inspiration 
I used Nichia 119 high CRI LEDs, not the ones someone else linked to in the thread. They put out great light and are cheap as chips (~$1ea + star from Fasttech or 60c ea from Product Listing Components or Texaspyro on this board) but take a little effort to put on stars. I can’t think of any better LEDs for quality budget shop lights, that’s why I use them 
Be aware that as point sources, if you want good coverage from high output single lights they’ll need to be mounted high up. That’s one of the reasons I put them in the longest strips that I could.
Tryps - it’s a little ironic that you put the frightners on using little 110/220V 3W drivers yet then recommend something from aliexpress…
I’ve also had some of those cheap, dangerous and unreliable drivers working just fine for years.
I don’t have much of a problem with cheapo drivers @120V, a lot less to go wrong there.
I see the irony but I don’t have an issue buying dc stuff or leds from china directly.
Anything mains wired has to be certified IMO and those parts are availible for cheap here so I wouldn’t take a chance in not so much buring your house down, wich is pretty unlikly, but more about somehow getting exposed mains on touchable surfaces.
(One component that fails would be enough and I doubt those are certified transformes )
It’s just that if something happens you’re the guy that is going to court and I don’t need that, nor do I need somebody else to do that.
I think that there are plenty of ways in which you can safeguard yourself against a closed short or a short to case if those are things you are worried about for whatever reason or you can spend the extra and get things that you personally believe are UL certified (how much credit you give UL certification of anything not made in Europe, ie. most electronics, is up to you).
Trying to scare people with tales of doom and woe which are clearly not backed up by reality doesn't seem terribly productive to me. I don't have a problem with you having those views, but telling others that they'll get electrocuted or their house will burn down if they use a Chinese LED driver is not at all helpful.
If my fasttech order from January would ever get here, I ordered 10 of these to play with for shop lighting. Less than $1 each if you order more than 5. I’m planning series parallel configuration for 12v and around 2A per emitter. If they work well I’ll probably order another 50.
Matt, thanks for the inspiration and the links…
Tryps, thanks for the words of warning, I understand your concerns.
I feel I should confess to having ordered some generic 3w emitters on stars to play with, but they are so cheap there is really nothing lost if they are terrible. I will likely get hold of some of the Nichias as above as well.
I’m still undecided about how to drive them. I will probably try a mains powered driver (Matt - do you have a link to the one you used?) but I also have access to 90Ah AGM batteries, so may also explore using a 12v source and solar chargers…eventually!
Thanks again for the input guys
Sorry, didn’t want to scare anybody. I kinda overdo stuff sometimes I know that. But you never know the background of the guys reading this, so I thought it would be good to point at some risks that exist to a certain degree. Anybody has to decide for himself what he wants to do, but if I say something with mains electricity involved I’d rather stay on the foolproof safe side, since everybody on the net can read this stuff.
Don’t have a problem with informed people using uncertified drivers and stuff they checked themselves, since they know what they’re doing, know and will take care of the risks involved.
The regulations regarding isolation, voltages and protection classe are availible online and I’d invite everyone to cast a glance.
That stuff sorted out, back to the project.
There are some interesting shapes of COB leds availible for cheap, they allways seem to have an okay colour. At least the ones I have in my downlights had.
Some have a Bar shape wich should fit in U-profile aluminium, they go for cheap on ebay, ali, bg, ft and so forth. leds.de has some nice led bars with nichia high cri leds but they go for a premium price(5-10€ pp).
KKW - those are cheap XP-Es, that’s for sure, I’ll have to remember those in future. Certainly easier to use than the Nichias which need moderately modded stars to be reflowed onto.
heyho - here it is http://www.buyincoins.com/item/27619.html
Give those generic LEDs a go, you have nothing to lose! If you don’t like them, you can just put them in something else, there’s always something that needs LEDs
No worries Tryps, I appreciate the perspective and it doesn’t hurt to make people aware of the pros and cons of a particular approach. It’s a good idea whatever the approach to think about how things might fail and how to mitigate the consequences of that failure.
Those strip COB LEDs are interesting and worth thinking about. High CRI is a huge plus in stuff that I do so it’s worth the extra effort to get it, plus I dislike cool white LEDs with a passion I was wiring in a new car stereo the other week and was struggling to see what colours some of the wires were using the warm white XRE LEDs in my modded dome light. Put on my neutral white XP-G2 headlamp (~80CRI, so not even a Nichia 219) and the colours immediately popped out and it was a breeze figuring out what was what!
another thought for a super simple cheap and easy light - use a spare 5V phone charger and an AMC7135 chip per LED. Most cell phone chargers are ~700mA (some are 1A), so could drive 2 separate LEDs or one at 700mA (2 chips). I've done this several times for task lights and it's very effective plus the parts are easy to come by (Goodwill usually has piles of chargers for ~$1ea). 7135 chips are available all over the place for not much money.