Technical articles

Yes, LED strip can run 24/7. What changes is the calendar: 50,000 hours is 5.7 years, a five-year period covers 43,800 hours, and driver heat sets its calendar.

What a field evaluation and field label can and cannot do for unlisted LED strip, drivers and custom assemblies, and what to settle with the inspector.

Mono, tunable white, RGB, RGBW or SPI: which controller each LED neon flex version needs, how the version changes feeds and drivers, and what to ask at quote.

How the ICRA matrix classes an LED strip install in an occupied hospital: activity type, patient risk group, class, permits, and a plan to keep the class low.

An AFCI trips on LED drivers for three reasons in test order: wiring, the load, the count. Where AFCI applies, what the code means, and what to try first.

Cove lighting dimensions worked out: the gap that avoids scallops, a lip height from the sightline, and a pocket sized from real channels and the feed wire.

Does LED strip satisfy NEC 210.70? What the 2023 text asks, where a switched receptacle is not allowed, and what the wall control must be, room by room.

LED strip in a church or auditorium has to dim low without banding on the stream, match from run to run and vanish when off. Five strip jobs and a worked cove.

Patient rooms on a locked behavioral health unit need tested, sealed luminaires, not strip in a channel. Where strip fits: staff rooms and the nurse station.

A dark stretch on outdoor neon flex points to one of five places: end cap, lead exit, joint, bend or feed. Read the pattern, take the reading, then repair it.

No standard defines marine-grade LED strip, and UL 1598A excludes 24V strip on a driver. Ask for four results instead: salt fog, water, UV and vibration.

Curved cove LED strip works when the product bends in the plane of the curve: S-shape strip and side-bend neon for rotundas, bendable channel for barrel vaults.