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anyone use steve's led drivers?


Dizzle21

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They have no track record and there are better options available. If you want super cheap (price and quality) drivers, check DealExtreme or Satistronics; otherwise, RapidLED, LEDGroupBuy, NanoTuners, etc., all have good to excellent quality drivers at unbeatable prices.

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I use Steves drivers. Easy to install and dimmable. I don't have experience with any other type of driver so I wouldn't be able to compare them to anything else. But they work fine for me.

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I use Steves drivers. Easy to install and dimmable. I don't have experience with any other type of driver so I wouldn't be able to compare them to anything else. But they work fine for me.

 

Just ordered 2 of the double drivers for my 28 LED build

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They seem to be a little expensive for what they are. I guess it depends on how much you spend on a power supply. Meanwells are almost the same price and would be much cleaner. The only advantage I can see is that these will do PWM and 0-10v, but 0-10v requires another cable.

 

Its cool he's making them, though. They are competitive.

 

Brandon

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i ordered some for a set up im doing for my biocube.. i dont plan on building the light for a few weeks.

 

But i ordered steves cause they were cheaper than buckpucks, and he'll customize them for free. I had a 500ma one made for some of the true violets from nanotuners

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Buckpucks cannot drive 8 LEDs. This has long been known. Best you can do is 7 with XP-G or Rebel ES LEDs. With everything else, 6 is your limit. Get your forward voltage any higher than 24v, and you are asking for trouble.

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I’m cheap B)

 

The buckpucks say they can only do 6 LEDs, or run them in parallel strings which comes with lots of other issues.

 

For my build 28 LEDs that would be 6 separate drivers with 6 dimmer knobs, with Steve’s drivers I can use 2 double drivers, whites and blues, with the meanwells I would have to add another power supply and wire in the dimmers.

 

I picked up a cheap $10 eBay adjustable universal laptop power supply with free shipping,

 

With a lot of DIY shipping ads up fast

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This is just an issue with the Buckpucks. When we first started diving into DIY LED builds way back when, we quickly found out by the process of destructive elimination that the Luxdrive datasheets are lacking to say the least. You can use up to 32v power supplies, but you really are limited to a max of 24v total forward voltage.

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One Trick... you could squeeze 26 LEDs out of 2 meanwells. :) But I see your point on the math.

 

Thanks, evil. I plan on using Meanwells (either fixed or dimmable) for just about everything except maybe larger projects, but its good to know on the buckpucks for when I'm planning on adding just a few LEDs.

 

Brandon

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Don't rule out our new TRP drivers. They are much easier to use than the Meanwells, and more efficient. A little more expensive though, but for the features they offer, I think they are worth it. It's not because I sell them. Most people forget that I use everything that we sell on my own personal tanks, and I wouldn't use poor quality product, so why would I sell them?

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Nice! Thanks! I was referring to the nanocustoms website. Not a whole lot on there yet. I'll check these links out.

 

Sorry for the thread hijack!

 

Brandon

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^^Agreed with Neve, I've pointed a few locals to Nanotuners to look a the TR drivers and nobody can "find" anything about them. The link and price are there but the specs aren't.

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Yeah, I know. We are updating the site with more information here very soon. With all the backorders that have to be processed, finding time for the web site is hard.

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I use Steves drivers. Easy to install and dimmable. I don't have experience with any other type of driver so I wouldn't be able to compare them to anything else. But they work fine for me.

 

 

on the two channel dimmable ones is the dimming for each channel separate?

 

Steve

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