Let me preface this by saying that I'm the President and Director of Manufacturing of EcoTech Marine, so naturally I'm going to be a bit biased. I also don't believe there is anything wrong with DIY LED's, as a technical/mechanical kind of guy myself, the desire to build your own lighting is something I truly respect!
There are big differences between DIY LED solutions and commercially available products, but naturally these differences will depend on how you make your DIY solution and which commercially available LED product you buy from the market place. I can only speak for our Radion line of LED lights and here are only some of the differences:
1) Made in America from Globally Sourced Components
Made in America has almost become a point of contention for a lot of people these days, given that the nature of a global marketplace has essentially made made in America nearly impossible to achieve. Made in America from Globally Sourced Components does not mean that we buy something from another country and slap our label on it. Far from it. We've invested millions of dollars into vertically integrating our manufacturing processes which means we do things in-house. Our circuit boards are actually assembled right here in Allentown and quality controlled by yours truly, along with the support of our company, now at 40+ people strong.
What this means to you as a consumer is that we know exactly what's inside your product and you get higher quality as a result. That's because we came up with the ideas, we engineered the solutions, designed the parts, the boards and the circuits, and we make it ourselves. In this industry, that's unique. EcoTech Marine and AquaIllumination are some of the only companies in the US who take it to this level of in-house manufacturing.
2) Control
EcoSmart Live was designed from the ground up to be simple, powerful, and reliable. Over the last 18 months this control platform has flourished and become more feature filled and useful than ever before. Sure, you may not need a thunder storm in the middle of the day, but some people like features like that. There are loads of features that are truly useful, such as error monitoring of your lights, easier customer support since we can log into your account and help you out, as well as view vitals for your hardware, and remote web cam monitoring through a
Dropcam. This level of control comes out of the box with the Radion lighting but will cost a fortune through third party controllers on a DIY route, if it's even possible. And try getting phone support for open-source controller or DIY LED projects. Ain't gonna happen.
3) Aesthetic, Reliability, Service
Being a commercially produced product, we understand that it must be reliable. We've spent millions of dollars on the above mentioned equipment to provide you just that. And when something does go wrong, whether it's your fault or ours, we are here to take care of it. Our customer support staff is industry renowned and having them here does make a difference.
Also, because we're a commercially produced product we take the overall aesthetic of our light seriously. It's hard to argue the Radion is not a beautiful piece of equipment that you wouldn't be proud to have over your tank.
4) Innovation
Innovation is built into our company philosophy, along with
Customer Driven Quality and
Continuous Improvement. You can see innovation everywhere in our products but some good examples are our ESL cloud based control system. This cloud-based trend is now even being duplicated by controller companies in the market. Also, our TIR lenses are so desirable that DIY companies literally sell OUR lenses to use over their DIY solutions.
In closing, I'd like to just post this picture taken just a few feet away from where I type this message. I think this speaks volumes of what a commercially produced LED light made in America means:
