WARNING
Before you spend your hard earned cash on things that people say on the forum, STOP and think a little and do some research of your own.
The point in question is the other day we posted that we were looking to develop plasma lighting to see if they are the light of the future. Within five minutes there was new a post with pictures of the equipment from a DIY place in the USA, saying they could get the equipment landed in the country for R 3900.00 Shocked, after spending considerably more just to land the stuff, we went back to the only present manufacturers of plasma lighting in the world for answers.
This is the reply we got.
“Hello George and Leigh,
Thank you for your message, and we understand your concern and that there is some confusion around what DIYProjectorkits.com is doing. I assure you that you have been treated fairly, and can give you some feedback on the units DIYProjectorkits.com is offering. You can see from their photo that there is a difference between what you have and what they are offering.
1. They have limited availability of STA 40-02 lamps only. They purchased a large quantity at one time in order to get a price break, and they are not able to purchase any more for specific reasons.
2. They do not have access to the STA 41 series, which are more efficient, have a longer life and are the correct color and CRI rating for aquarium use. So they are not able to provide the same lamp that you purchased.
3. Customers who purchase these units and attempt to fit them into aquarium fixtures will have no warranty as they have not followed the strict design criteria laid out by us.
4. They have purchased fan cooled power supplies, and not fan free high efficiency power supplies that are planned for use in closed aquarium lighting fixtures. The DIYProjectorkits.com projection product is intended for use with fanned cooling, which is also why their driver heat sink is smaller. If you do not use a fan for cooling purposes their system will overheat.
5. They do not have the driver prewired for use with the controls of the power supply, or for use with the customer Graphical User Interface program for developing a lighting fixture, and for evaluating its performance. Their typical customer base is electrical engineers that want to wire things themselves, and they do not have a monitoring option in place.
6. The DIYProjectorkits.com target user is a make it yourself “home projection system” customer. They basically give the lamp system away in order to make money on the screens and other accessories that they want to provide in support of that package.
7. I don’t know how DIY would be able to provide a further 30% discount beyond the pricing they listed unless they are willing to lose money further, and hope they will get accessory orders to make money with it. They also do not have any significant volume left to fill orders for any significant quantity.
Hopefully this information is helpful for you to understand that the product they are selling is not the unit intended for aquarium use and does not have the correct specifications, power supplies and other accessories needed, and they are not competing with you as they are not providing the same product you are providing (the higher performance version along with accessories intended for aquarium lighting applications, and system capabilities to support integration into a lighting fixture), and they no longer have access to a quantity of further lamps to support wholesale operation.”
We have imported the development units in order to develop a high quality aquarium fitting, based on specific design criteria stipulated by the manufacturer of the lamp. This is a lengthy, expensive, and time consuming process, but we think it worthwhile to pursue this project. Whether plasma lighting is a thing of the future, we will only know after 6-12 months, when all parameters of development have been met. Our aim is to rather offer a new technology, locally designed and manufactured at a more affordable price than imported units.
Leigh & George
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