A Guide for Buying LED's on E Bay

I have had a number of people ask about where to get the LED's that I used in my recent instructable,

https://www.instructables.com/id/An-Awesome-LED-PVC...

Rather than just give a link to something I thought it would be better to share some of what I have learned about the new LED's that have been coming up for sale and the process of buying them on E Bay.

I will provide links here but because the listings on E Bay are constantly changing I have no idea for how long any of them will be valid.

In order to avoid being thought of as spam I am not going to recommend any one company to buy from. I, in fact, have bought from many, it all depends on who has the best deal at the moment. The ones I am showing should be thought of as examples of what is for sale. You should do a search at the time you are thinking of buying so you can get the best price. E Bay is a very fluid place and you need to learn how to go with the flow in order to get the best deals.

There is a myriad of LED's out now. The specific ones I used for my light were in a strip arrangement. They are mounted in modules with varying numbers of LED's and varying colors and wired together in parallel and held together with double stick tape. The tape holding them can be cut and the modules can be spaced out in a string. The basic types of LED's are white, either warm white or daylight, and RGB which stands for Red Green Blue. RGB can be made to appear as any color using a controller to mix the colors.

RGB's are usually limited to just 3 LED's per module. They have 4 wires connecting them, one for power and then 3 others, one for each color. In order to work correctly you HAVE to use a controller. If you buy a strip with an included controller then you have no problem. If you buy a strip alone you will need to get one for it. The good news is that you can control many strips with just one controller.

I made it a habit to test each strip as I received them and discovered that they are not all wired the same. The power is always the same but sometimes the color wires don't control the color they are. So one strip will be green and the other red. This is really annoying but also really good to know BEFORE you solder everything together. Always test them to find out which color is which.

RGB's are more expensive than single color. And I can understand that. They take more work to wire them up.

The first strip I bought was a single 3 light strip of 20. I wanted to see what they were and what they could do. I had seen (and bought) the long string of LED's but these strip ones were new to me. The 3 LED's per module was pretty standard. Then some with 5 showed up and lately some with 6. There is a square one that has 4, either in one color or RGB. The most so far that I have seen has been 6 LED's on one module. All the modules always require 12 volts no matter how many LED's they have.

Keep in mind that the more LED's there are the higher the power requirements to run them. For some things the 3 's work great. But if you need more light then the higher number might work. The more LED's per module, the more they cost.

There is something strange going on with the power requirements. The manufacturer often gives a number of watts for each individual LED. But in experimenting with them the numbers don't add up right. Now I have been seeing disclaimers from the sellers that the manufacturers numbers don't add up and that you can't rely on the wattage being what they say. So no body appears to really understand just what the ratings are. I used my own meter and went by that. Basically if the power supply you are using doesn't overheat then your OK. If it does then you need a bigger power supply.

The number that you often see in the description refers to the physical size of the LED's. The 5050 LED is the larger brighter one. I avoid the smaller ones. Most of the strips have 5050 LED's. A lot of the long strings have smaller LED's because they are not intended for lighting as much as decoration.

Almost all of the LED's being sold on E Bay are coming from China. That is why they are cheaper. Most of the LED's are made in China anyway. Your just buying direct this way instead of going through a third party that adds their own packaging and doubles or triples the price.

Many of them have poor English translations and translators. While the listings are often well written and correct, if you have to deal with an issue with them it can get to be a problem. Their time zones are 12 hours different from ours so don't expect an answer right away. It may take several messages to get them to understand. Use simple English that can be translated easily. They are usually very eager to please and resolve issues. Bad feedback on E Bay can totally destroy a sloppy vender and they have learned that. They don't want you to open a case with E Bay and they don't want you giving them bad feedback. SO they will work hard at fixing mistakes. But beware, if a seller does have a bad feedback number, don't bid on their stuff no matter how good it looks.

E Bay has a special guarantee program that E Bay will refund your money if something happens like stuff getting destroyed in the mail. But my experience has been that the Chinese company will often reship at their own expense rather than have you open a case. So be patient and work with them first.

It takes forever for stuff to get here. Mail service from China is going to take weeks. There is nothing you can do about it. You save a bunch on buying stuff from them, but you wait a while for it to get here. Sometimes there are customs delays too.

Don't plan on sending anything back. While most of the companies say they accept returns the reality is the postage to send it there will be more than the item is worth. I don't know how they can do the shipping and still make money but they have figured it out. But it is essentially a one way deal. And if they ship you the wrong item by mistake they will not usually ask you for it back. They take it as a loss.

So, to date, the majority of my dealings with Chinese companies on E Bay has been very positive. I don't hesitate to buy from them.

By the way --- I love the items that are free shipping. I ALWAYS look at shipping charges and consider that as part of the price. Some underachievers try to make money on the shipping and will disguise an items real cost and add unreasonable shipping charges. I saw an item recently, a laser pointer, that said it would ship first class mail and would cost $25.00 for shipping. When was the last time you sent a letter that was under a pound and paid $25.00 for the stamp? E Bay has a policy against unreasonable shipping charges. They view it as a way to try and get around the sale fees. Yet people still try and do it. So always consider shipping charges when you bid/buy an item.

Sometimes the best price breaks are from buying in quantity, but not always.

With LED strips you literally need to do the math. Always figure it out to the cost of a 20 module strip since that is the way the are almost all sold.

For example one strip might have a price of $8.00 while another company will sell the same thing only they are offering 100 modules for $50.00 of the same thing. Well 100 modules is 5 strips of 20. Five strips for $50. is $10.00 a strip so they are $2 more per strip than the other one. Always do the math.

The LED's that I used were ones I bought in a bulk pack, buy it now deal. The are similar to this :

http://www.ebay.com/itm/361102191614?_trksid=p2055...

The ones I bought were a little cheaper than this, but notice the free shipping. They will send you a large box with 30 LED strips (3 of the packages in the picture) all the way from China and do it for no charge. Not to bad.

600 modules is 30 strips. Thirty strips for $212. comes out to be close to $6.90 each.

Now when you do an EBay search for similar items (it's one of the options in the category view) you find this :

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_kw=600pcs+5LED+7...

Right away this item shows up

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-7512-5050-SMD-5-LED-...

So that is one strip for $10.00. A little more than the price of the 600 but if you only need to buy one---. Might not be a bad deal. But how about this, you buy the 600, keep the ones you need and sell the rest to your friends for $10 each and make a small profit.

How adventurous are you feeling?

Here is another one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/1000pcs-5050-SMD-5-LED-Mod...

That is for 1000 and $329.00 Doing the math it comes out to be $6.60 each strip. Not that great a deal except these are warm white which tend to cost a little more. Still only 30 cents less is not a huge amount.

Continue through the search and you find this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-5050-SMD-5-LED-Modul...

That's $8.55 with free shipping and you can buy as many as you want (says 9 available) . That is not a bad deal. Might be what your looking for. Ok, you get the idea, then you run across this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-Day-White-5050-SMD-6...

Notice it's a 6 LED unit and it costs less than the 5 LED one that you just looked at.

Actually these (the 6 LED) have dropped in price a lot lately. They used to be over 10 each and no one had them in bulk. Well they are still not in bulk but the price is now equal to the 5 LED unit. Maybe I should pick up a few of them.

So there are a lot of choices but by smart shopping you should be able to get a reasonable deal.

This is a search for some RGB modules.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=20pcs+3+RGB+...

This search has a lot of other stuff with it. So it's a bit more confusing.

I think the average range for a 20 strip RGB is in the $10 range. Anything under 8 I would consider to be a good price now.

There are also a lot of single color strings. You can get all green, or blue or whatever.

To power the string you need a power adapter. You can use any 12 volt adapter if it can provide enough amperage to power the string. You can get all kinds of connectors on E Bay that allow you to connect the power to the string. RGB strings use 4 wire connectors.If you are hooking up multiple strings and need a heavy duty power supple you can find those on E Bay also.

To turn the string on and off and control the brightness you need a controller. For single color ones there are simple in line switches. Some of the better controllers work on RF with little remotes. Interestingly I discovered that most of them operate on the same frequency so one remote can control multiple switches.

The little in line units have a limited power capacity. You can burn them out if you go past what they are rated for. Bigger unites that can handle more power are not as mobile. There are lots of choices available with new designs showing up all the time.

For the RGB units you need a special controller. The most common one is an infrared one with 2 different key size remotes. They work. But a way better one that I tried is the touch sensitive remote that is RF. I really like the unit. Below are a few searches for different controllers.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_kw=RF+Touch+Cont...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/201120897155?_trksid=p2055...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/191465686241?_trksid=p2055...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_kw=DC+12V+RF+Wir...

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_kw=12-24V+Wirele...

A few rare times I have received what I would call seconds. Items that still worked but had things wrong with them. Like the picture shows, a few modules had some melting on them and the resin coat seal was messed up. It has been a very rare thing, but like in any thing you always take a risk. If it's really bad then let the company know and if necessary file a complaint. If it not a big deal make note of the company name and either don't buy from them again or buy with caution.

All in all I have found shopping on E Bay is safe and allows you to get interesting products that you can't get elsewhere. But use caution with it just like you would with anything else.

This is just something I came across that I thought someone might be interested in seeing.

They have been making wire with tiny LED's in it. The wire is coated with a clear insulation. They are also on E Bay.

A search result for those if anyone is interested.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_kw=SUPERNIGHT+10...