These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 30 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control the entire strip at once with any microcontroller and three transistors. The way they are wired, you will need a 9-12VDC power supply and then ground the R/G/B pins to turn on the three colors. Use any NPN or N-channel MOSFET (although the big powerful kind is good for a large strip) and PWM the inputs for color-mixing.
We splurged and got the waterproof kind with white background color. There’s a 3M adhesive strip on the back which should stick to most smooth surfaces. Great for decorating your bike or art project, costuming or funky fashion.
You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 10cm (3 LEDs each), and trim off the waterproof cover with a hobby knife. Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go.
They come in 5 meter reels with 0.1″ molexy connectors, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.
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Do you think you may be able to find some with a black back ground instead of white. I use to work for a motorcycle customizer and would install custom lighting on motorcycles and trikes. This type of strip was very popular and your price is very reasonable and may have appeal to the automotive customizer. The black is more universal to other colors and seems to hide itself better.
What’s the current per channel per meter on these? I’m assuming they’re three RGB in series with current limiting resistors for 12V, so per meter you have 10 strings of 3 LEDs in parallel, at 20mA that’s 200mA per color channel per meter. Is that about right?
I’m new to electronics & microcontrollers so sorry if these are a simple questions.
1) It indicates on the product page that you can control the entire strip at once. Does this mean I couldn’t address and animate the on/off state of individual LEDs, or make them different colors simulataneuously? Is there an LED tape product that can do this? I assume with this, I can control the intensity of the LED for the entire strip, so I could animate a fade in and out effect or fade between colors?
2) How much documentation is included and will I need more reference to understand how to control this? I can’t find any PDFs or datasheets referenced above.
Do you think you may be able to find some with a black back ground instead of white. I use to work for a motorcycle customizer and would install custom lighting on motorcycles and trikes. This type of strip was very popular and your price is very reasonable and may have appeal to the automotive customizer. The black is more universal to other colors and seems to hide itself better.
we’ll look for it next time we place an order!
> Great for decorating your bike or art project,
Or your cat! Do you have a pic of Mosfet from the last AaE?
These are great, its good to see them so affordable.
What’s the current per channel per meter on these? I’m assuming they’re three RGB in series with current limiting resistors for 12V, so per meter you have 10 strings of 3 LEDs in parallel, at 20mA that’s 200mA per color channel per meter. Is that about right?
20mA per LED, 10 x 3 LEDs in parallel, per meter = 20ma * 90 = 600mA total per meter
What, no premade Arduino shield? Kidding, kidding…
Or am I?
These will be great to add to my helmet for longboarding in the early morn before the sun rises. Wicked
Do you have a datasheet for these?
It’s hard to interface something without a datasheet. <grin!>
A search of the ‘web with these: led "flexi-strip" 12v datasheet
turned up a lot of hits and very nice page here:
Flexi-Strip RGB30 1M
http://www.artisticlicence.com/index.php?mode=products⊂=detail&product_id=420&project_id=&category_id=2&PHPSESSID=835cul1bi927usdb2um78k2nl4
That certainly looks like the adafruit flexi-strip. The link there
marked "Flexi-Strip User Guide" leads you to a nice PDF file.
Hope this helps…
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(a bit more searching)
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Based on the package, the visible portion of the LED array, and the
pinout, a good guess for the LED modules themselves would be:
Bivar SMP6-RGB RED/GREEN/BLUE LED, SMD PLCC6 package
This datasheet is available from Digi-Key (www.digiley.com).
Hope this helps…
Frank
I’m new to electronics & microcontrollers so sorry if these are a simple questions.
1) It indicates on the product page that you can control the entire strip at once. Does this mean I couldn’t address and animate the on/off state of individual LEDs, or make them different colors simulataneuously? Is there an LED tape product that can do this? I assume with this, I can control the intensity of the LED for the entire strip, so I could animate a fade in and out effect or fade between colors?
2) How much documentation is included and will I need more reference to understand how to control this? I can’t find any PDFs or datasheets referenced above.
@vanb – please post up in the customer support forums.