On Tuesday morning a box of goodies arrived for me from china- Super-bright LED Strips :D. We’ll technically they are for the family electronic business but since they are samples I get to play with them and review them 😛 Here’s a quick look of whats in the box:
(please forgive the quality of the pics, I’m using my phone since Dad borrowed the nice camera to take on holiday;) )
We purchased a range of strips: pure white, RGB and a pure blue strip and a fully controllable HL1606 strip. The strips all seem to be of a high quality with all of the LED’s working on arrival 😀 The RGB and HL1606strips are defiantly the most impressive!
Here are the two RGB strips we ordered, both have 5050 SMD LED’s which are impressively bright! they run on 12V DC with integrated resistors and are cut-able (is that a real word? 😛 ) in 3-LED sections. We have a normal non-waterproof strip with 300LED’s per 5Meter length and a 150LED per 5M strip with a very fancy coating (possibly silicon?) that makes them waterproof to IP68 (one of the highest waterproof ratings :D) this coating is very clear and very flexible and doesn’t add much cost to the strip at all 😀 All the strips also include an adhesive backing making them very easy to install 😀
Here is a 60LED piece of 300LED/5M RGB strip wired to an IR RGB controller with remote and a power-supply. This took me around 5 minutes to setup and the applications are endless from under counter/desk/cupboard lighting to room mood lighting to garden lighting and even automotive or computer decorative lighting 🙂 Next is a quick vid I made demonstrating the different modes of the controller, the camera unfortunately doesn’t do the brightness and the deep color of the strip justice…
Next we have my favorite thing in the entire box 😀 I’m not going to elaborate much now since I’m planning to dedicate a post to this strip some time.. It’s and RGB strip that has each 3-LED segment driven by an HL1606 LED driver chip. It is controlled by a small device with an LCD display and has quite a few different modes and settings, as well as an RF remote. This controller sends serial commands down the strip allowing it to instruct each individual HL1606 to set the LED segments to and color and brightness. Here is a little pic(It’s a bit dark but you should be able to make out whats going on):
The strip runs on 12V DC just like the others and is inside a silicon tube, which only gives it an IP65 water-resistant rating. These strips are REALLY mesmerizing and playing with the different modes is endless fun… the 5M strips can even be strung together as long as they have adequate power since they are controlled serially as opposed to being driven by a MOSFET in the controller like the normal RGB led strips. I’m looking forward to playing with this strip more and possibly even making my own computer/PIC micro-controller controlling device for the strip. again here is a quick vid of the beast in action demonstrating how each section is controlled separately:
We’ll thats about it for the introduction to my new toys 😀 I hope you like them as much as I do! (All-though I do doubt this since its generally accepted that I’m LED mad 😛 ) I should be posting some pics etc of whatever crazy ideas I come up with for them in the near future when the camera is back! If you decide you HAVE TO HAVE SOME TOO right now 😛 then feel free to email me (robthepyro @ rambo.co.za) until we get the pricing right and put them on our main retail website (www.pro-tecc.co.za or www.pqsound.co.za < shameless advertising 😛 😉 )
Until next time.. keep it real kids 😉
~Rob.
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