I don't know where best to ask this but hardware seems as good a place as any. Does anyone have any experience with the kind of LED strips that people stick to the back of desks? more importantly does anyone know of any reputable make that isn't made from finest ebay chinesium?
There is nothing wrong with the Ebay ones apart from the adhesive. I use this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Everbuild-Mammoth-Powergrip-Double-Sided-Clear/dp/B001G9HVVK It will hold anything to anything pretty much. Just peel off the backing on the LED and replace with that ^ Edit. Obs buy it the correct width.
i just keep hearing horror stories about how they don't last longer than a few weeks to a month at best. its enough to make me raise an eyebrow.
LEDs are LEDs, man. I once bought some Phobya ones thinking they would be better. They were just Chinese ones in a fancy packet at 4x the cost. I have been running some for well over a year and they are fine, providing you solder them properly etc.
I've bought a few 5m strips of RGB and some shorter ones of single colour. Two were "name" brand, and they were supplied in the same anti static bag and the same reel as the "cheap" stuff, with the same half-arsed tape. I'm not sure I could say "These are better than these" for any of them. Or, indeed, tell them apart any more.
Yeah, the adhesive is always labelled 3M but is it fook. That stuff up there ^ is like atomic. Whatever it touches it will stay stuck to lol.
so how do they connect? in theory a 5m roll should do both my desks, can i slice it and and wire both halves to a single double receiver?
All mine have been three or four cable, four usually being for the RGB I think. I've got something like 270 running off one arduino for my thunder hammer, and that doesn't display any particular problems. I just soldered onto the contacts that request integral to the strip after chopping off the bit I needed for another project. I have bought some that came with four pin headers to connect to stuff, but those too have been fine for chip and solder. I'll take some pictures of the cheapest stuff I bought when I get home, and if I remember. I'm on mobile so kind of a slot for you, but there's some images in here of my biggest RGB strip setup; https://imgur.com/a/SqzxY
Go to Aliexpress. Search WS2812b. Say "Holy crap! That's cheap..." Order, like, 12 or whatever Wait 2-3 weeks Experiment with the adafruit neopixel library
IME, the cheap kits have crappy controllers that don't always last, but the strips are usually ok (apart from the universally shite backing tape).
I bought some strips from a local lighting dealer which I'm almost certain are no different from the cheapies on ebay, and used them for install - i.e. if they break I have a whole lot of messy work to replace them (especially around the tray, but also behind the TV) There was a breakage in one strip from the word go that needed snipping out and clipping back together, but other than that they've been fine for a couple years. The adhesive seemed fine for initial sticking power, but I clipped the strips into place as an added precaution, as re-sticking post-installation wasn't really an option. The power supplies were absolute tat, made from grade Z chineseum, made the most horrific of whining noises at certain brightnesses and were inconsistent from one to the next (different levels of brightness from the same controller). I sent them straight back and purchased a single Meanwell PSU from Mouser that is excellent. I'd recommend you do the same. I'm using the cheap drivers with no issues, though using a haxed Philips hue lightstrip controller with them. Incidentally, I have a spare driver and around 7m of the 60x RGB/m strip I'm using if you're interested?
Thanks dude. Those would be B&W CDM-7NT fronts, CDM-CNT centre - precursors to the original 700 series, and then subsequently the CM series once again, and now again renamed the 700 series, and then probably back to the CM naming convention in a few years.
This is the absolute cheapest reel of LED's I've ever bought (Controller bought separately), and you can see some joins in them, but I've not found anything amiss with it. They're also joined at lengths because it's going to be the footwell lighting that Ford, in their genius, failed to offer on early Mk1 Focii. Tested them for a couple of hours on that controller and all's well as far as I can tell. These are also the ones with the 4 pin headers on - You can see there that there's two fed off the one header, that doesn't seem to cause any issues either. Aren't they? Almost entirely unadulterated version of this; https://github.com/jamesabruce/cloudlamp It works best on longer strips IMO
It may be perfect for a mod I'm planning on doing this year involving storage and a pun on "the cloud"
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/build-cloud-lamp-sound-reactive-lightning/ That may also be of interest then! The rest of the project, basically, that the code is for. I have another piece of code that I used for a fire lamp for the girlfriend, but like buggery can I find the source anymore. And of course it's not commented with the author's name :/
There is a another project log out there (somewhere) to make the LEDs respond to the average hue/brightness of whatever is on your monitor - useful for gaming or if you watch films on your PC. Pretty sure it was based around adafruit but I'm cooking dinner and cba to search through my links.
Might not be the best demo but this is the type of DIY Ambilight thing that @David was referring to -
