These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs in the 1m reel, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that's right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED's red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel).
The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.
The LPD8806 chip has built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel - that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it.
The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a weatherproof sheathing. You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5"/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1" copper pads and you're good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use). You must use a 5V DC power supply to power these strips, do not use higher than 6V or you will destroy the entire strip
They come in 1 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end. These strips are sold in 1m reels! If you buy multiple reels, you'll get full 1m reels with two connectors (not a combined length).
To wire up these strips we suggest picking up some JST SM plug and receptacle cables. Please note, we try hard to get consistent wiring between batch of strips but we can't guarantee it, please double-check which side is the input and which is the output by looking at the strip itself for the directional arrows and pin labelling. Red is power, blue or black is ground, yellow is data pin, green is clock pin. If you are getting a less-than-5 meter strip, you'll probably also want one plug and receptacle set to make it easy to connect and disconnect.
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