Lighting technology, selection, and safety

These background articles cover the specifications and standards that the repair guides keep referring to: the voltage families strips are built in, what an IP rating does and does not promise, how brightness and colour are actually measured, the photon units grow lights are sold in, the radio protocols behind smart bulbs, and what makes one LED product repairable when a near-identical one is disposable. They are written for choosing well before a purchase, and for understanding a fault afterwards.

They pay off twice. Read before a purchase, they prevent the mismatches the repair section sees most often — a 24 V strip on a 12 V supply, an IP20 strip in a bathroom, a smart bulb on a protocol the household hub does not speak. Read after a failure, they explain what the matching repair guide is asking you to measure and why the reading matters, and each article links on to the guides that put its numbers to work.