The Quarky Engineer

I have completed my analysis needed to select the can lights I am going to use in the new house. I figured since I need 250 of them it was worth doing some testing. I have put text in the descriptions with each of the pictures below explaining the data and the conclusion.

A couple of notes – These are can light inserts, not bulbs. You can also put in reflector and a standard edison style bulb in a can light, but there isn’t any compelling reason to do that. I suspect the results would have be similar with bulbs.

The LEDs I tested were all available at Home Depot, and no doubt there are many more brands that could be tested. The CE brand is a brand manufactured for Home Depot (I believe by Cooper Electronics), and I think only available from them.

The prices for each insert are very close with the exception of the CE 4-pack, in which the lights are almost half the price of the rest.

Summary – The idea that ‘you get what you pay for’ does not appear to be true in this case. The performance of the cheapest CE light is on par, if not better, than most the other lights here. When considered on a value/$ scale it is even better.

Note this is not a test of longevity, and it is possible that a longevity test will reveal some yet to be detected weaknesses. I am skeptical of that, however.

The winner, at least for me is this:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commercial-Electric-5-6-in-Matte-White-Integrated-LED-Recessed-Trim-5-Ways-4-Pack-NS01aA11FR1-259/303780877

I ordered and picked up 250 of them from my local home depot, and they even had that many in stock. They did suggest that at this spending level I should sign up to be a ‘pro’, which reduced the price another $200.

Happy to discuss more and answer any questions.. and of course happy to take in any more data and observations.

Well, that escalated quickly. (Electricity bill for the new house for the last month). 19 MWhrs.

I got one of each of the two lights I am considering for the shop/garage. The smaller 10K Lumen draws 92 watts, and measures 6200 Lux@1m direct (which is about right for 10K Lumen and an 83 degree profile). The larger 18K Lumen draws 162 watts and measures 11000 Lux@1m direct. A standard 600 Lumen CAN Light measures around 450-500 Lux@1m direct, so this single fixture is more than 20 times as bright as a single can light.

Both appear easy to install, and good physical quality. It would be possible to replace the power supply, which is certainly the weak link. I couldn’t detect any audible sound from either (hum or whine).

The both cost about the same, $96-$99 each, so time to order 30 of them.

The drywall texturing is done, and some of the walls have been primed. The house is very very white right now! The downstairs should get primed tomorrow, then comes color!

I need to pick the light fixtures for the lower shop and lower garage. Lower garage has 12 fixtures, lower shop has 15 fixtures.

I’m thinking of doing the 18″ 10k Lumen fixtures in the garage (1100 sq ft), and the 24″ 18k Lumen fixtures in the shop ( 1400 sq ft ).

That maps out to 109 lumens/sq ft in the garage (total of 120,000 lumens), and 193 lumens/sq ft in the shop (total of 270,000 lumens). Those are high numbers.

A second minor issue is the shop lights are all on one 15amp circuit, so I need to switch that circuit to run at 240Vs if I want all 15 of those lights to work. Those guys are 177W real power each.

Let’s talk about cameras. POE Cameras. I need to get 36 of them, so I bought a few different ones to test.. nothing crazy extensive, but enough for me to compare across a few different costs. I have a bunch of Hikvision ones (I used them in the current house), a Dahau, a few ReoLink ones (new), and a few Ubiquity ones (including a G3 and a G4 Pro).

The cost spread is significant. The Reolink $40, the Hikvision about $100, the Dahau about $150, the G3 about $140, and the G4 Pro about $450. Consider at the cheap end 36 Reolinks would cost $1140, while 36 G4 Pros would cost $16,000.

There is no question that the G4 Pro has the best video quality.. it is just stellar, but I was surprised that all of the other ones were very very similar to each other. The Reolink seemed a tad worse than the G3, but I doubt I could pick one from the other in a lineup and be confident.

People often mention the risk in the Chinese cameras (Reolink, Hikvision, etc) of them being compromised or being a security risk, but of course only the most unqualified network engineer would ever have these cameras in a subnet that has outside routable access. These will be in a dedicated physical network.

It is possible the Reolink or Hikvision will fail sooner.. of course interestingly enough I have 12 Hikvision cameras here now that have been running for 4+ years, as well as I had 4 of the Ubiquity first gen cameras that have all died. Consider for the price difference I could buy 7 spares for every camera in the house. That is a lot of spares.

(Note I will probably use BlueIris to record everything, although I have been testing Xeoma and it has worked well so far).

Any comments, suggestions, price comparisons?