Modeler's Brand LED's

Still under construction, more to come

About Modeler's Brand
Modeler's Brand is a small one man shop bring reasonably priced LED solutions to your projects. He has many types solutions from single LED's to Double Double Density LED Tape (no that is not a type-o, 6 LED's per inch!) to wiring accessories to model kits.

What Will Be Reviewed
I will mainly be covering the Smooth Double Density LED Tape in Red and Cool White along with a few small strips of other colors. I will be also cover some small strips of the regular DD LED tape, and a wiring solution.

The Website and Ordering
The website is the weakest part about his business. The website isn't up to par from what most people will be used to, it's pretty obvious that he has built the site him self as a low budget option. This is very normal for small, self ran e-tailers that are just starting out. It would be nice to see a nicer site as it could turn off new customers, but it's safe to say most people visiting it are there because of word of mouth. It is fairly easy to navigate to get where you want. The biggest turnoff is there is no automated check out or shopping cart. To order you must e-mail him. This has a big plus side to it, as you can ask questions before you order to make sure you get what you are really looking for. Payments are handled by Pay-Pal or money orders, so any worries about the checkout process should be put at bay. With my experience ordering from him, I received a reply with in 5 mins. and we e-mailed back and forth to ensure I was getting what I wanted and he was very professional. He was very helpful and never tried to push me into buying more than what I wanted or needed. Once I decided to make the order, he placed an invoice through Pay-Pal, and with in minutes I received it in my inbox. After I made payment I received a tracking number the same day. This brings us to shipping, all orders are shipped USPS Priority Mail, and Modeler's Brand does offer international shipping for all our friends abroad!

Packaging
I received my package in 2 business days, and it was in a USPS Priority box. I was pleasantly surprised upon opening the box, as I wasn't expecting to see a sealed bag with a invoice and a installation card!

Packaging




Invoice card


Instillation instruction card (covers the non smooth LED tape, I will cover a better way for the smooth later)


Product information card





About the Smooth Double Density LED Tape
First thing I should cover is these are sold as DIY and do not come pre wired. You must be able solder to install them and have connectors to what ever power source you plan on using. With that out of the way, the Smooth DD LED's have 3 LED's per inch, and one inch is equal to one segment. They come in many colors to fit your taste; Warm and Cool White, Red, Green, Blue, Amber, Ultra-Violet, Rose, and Hot Pink. You can cut the LED tape at each segment allowing you to make the strips as long or as short as you like, no more having to go with a smaller strip than what you want because it's an inch too long. The LED's are covered in a clear soft gel that protects the LED tape from scratches, dust, ect. The gel has a very nice side effect, as the light comes out of the LED's, it gets spread out by the gel. This ends up giving you a much smoother lighting than most LED's. More inline with CCFL's than most other LED lighting with out the use of an inverter, because the DD's run at 6-12 volts only pulling 20mA per segment. That means 1ft of the DD's will pull about 0.08amps, less than most case fans. This gives you many options for how you can power them. I plan on running the red off my fan controller that can adjust the voltage based off the PWM signal from my CPU fan header so the hotter my CPU is, the brighter the red will get! You could do the same with just a fan splitter cable. The white I plan on manually adjusting off the fan controller. For connecters most all of us have many molex connectors or old fans laying around that you can use, Modeler's is looking for some nice pass through molex connecters but has yet to find any at the time of this writing.

The strips come clearly marked with label on what color they are, but the tape it's self is not labeled.


Here is a closeup showing the LED segments and cut points. The positive and negative contact points are clearly marked for wiring. You can also connect as many strips off one power lead by wiring them together, you just need to solder jumpers from + to + and - to -


They come backed with 3M adhesive


Modeler's Brand also test the strip before shipment and this is where you'll want to solder so you don't mess up the gel coating.



Wiring
As I stated before the LED's do not come pre-wired and you must solder your own leads. I'm using leads from some old fans because I'm connecting them to my fan controller, but you can used some molex connector you have laying around also.

You can make you solder connections on the bottom side of the LED's so you don't have to mess up gel covering. The only thing about doing it like this you must rub the adhesive off the is covering the contact points.



I also ran some jumper wires to a second strip because he type is very flexible forwards and backwards, but side to side it is not. To do this all you do is connect the + to + and - to -



And here is the two strips all wired up.




Sample Colors

I've done my best to try to capture the color as close as possible, as most of you know many things will account for what I see and what you will see. Monitors, GPU's, ect, ect, ... will make a difference in the way the colors will show up. Also I was trying to just capture the color and not the brightness. Please note the lighting on the back, there is no hot spots, meaning you get a very even light much like CCFL's unlike most other LED's lighting solutions.

UV - I don't have much around the house that is UV reactive but found these paper clips had a couple color that worked. The UV is very bright, at night it will light up my spare room just from 5 segments (5 inches)




Amber - Very bright again, you could use this as orange also.


Blue - In the pic it looks a little darker than what it really is. This might be the brightest of all the colors.


Red - Again very bright, and it looks a little deeper red in person.


Cool White - This is a very white, white. The Warm White is a off white, please keep this in mind when ordering. As like all the others, it's very bright.





This is all for now and I will update soon, I'll also post when I do make updates.
Edited by GoodInk - 3/21/12 at 8:32am

Here are some posts from justinwebb, he was the guy that turned me on to them. I think these are probably the best lighting out there for modders and I'm just trying to spread the word on OCN about them.





More pics in the links
http://www.overclock.net/t/1104349/the-official-cooler-master-storm-trooper-club/1360#post_16506856
http://www.overclock.net/t/1104349/the-official-cooler-master-storm-trooper-club/1500#post_16561547

Wiring
As I stated before the LED's do not come pre-wired and you must solder your own leads. I'm using leads from some old fans because I'm connecting them to my fan controller, but you can used some molex connector you have laying around also.

You can make you solder connections on the bottom side of the LED's so you don't have to mess up gel covering. The only thing about doing it like this you must rub the adhesive off the is covering the contact points.



I also ran some jumper wires to a second strip because he type is very flexible forwards and backwards, but side to side it is not. To do this all you do is connect the + to + and - to -



And here is the two strips all wired up.



OP updated/

Thanks, how are you liking yours? I know you were not happy that the warm white wasn't a white white but the cool white is.

The UV are really good, a lot of the LED's UV's don't work very good, but these are just awesome. You can connect them to any 12 volt power source.