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Need recommendations on LED strips

324 views 7 replies 5 participants last post by  Halftone175 
#1 ·
So I've got one of them new white TT tower 900's coming, and I'd like to try my hand at putting some LED strips inside. I did a search on amazon for them and there are thousands to choose from, and I'm not sure how to proceed. I'll be building a controller myself, so that is not an issue. Is there a difference in quality on any of these? Anything specific I should avoid? Luminance/uniformity issues? Just looking for some advice
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#5 ·
My personal favorite are Adafruit Neopixels (RGBW). But, those are kinda expensive. I just like having a nice white that doesn't have pink or blue hues in it (and digital). Usually the ones off Amazon use SMD5050 so you shouldn't have to worry too much about their performance since those are "dime a dozen." They might actually even be manufactured by the same company and just sold under different brand names.

Are you going to use an Arduino Uno as the controller? Do you want digital or analog? The Neopixels are digital so you can control each led individually while the other, SMD5050, are analog which means you can only control the entire strip and not each led separately.
 
#6 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by Inelastic View Post

My personal favorite are Adafruit Neopixels (RGBW). But, those are kinda expensive. I just like having a nice white that doesn't have pink or blue hues in it (and digital). Usually the ones off Amazon use SMD5050 so you shouldn't have to worry too much about their performance since those are "dime a dozen." They might actually even be manufactured by the same company and just sold under different brand names.

Are you going to use an Arduino Uno as the controller? Do you want digital or analog? The Neopixels are digital so you can control each led individually while the other, SMD5050, are analog which means you can only control the entire strip and not each led separately.
Oh man, those are perfect! 144 led/m is awesome. I don't really like arduinos, feels too much like duplos where I want technic. I'll be using a PSoC unless I decide exactly how I want the dimming to go then I'd just go with descrite ICs and mosfets.
 
#7 ·
Quote:
Originally Posted by starliner View Post

Oh man, those are perfect! 144 led/m is awesome. I don't really like arduinos, feels too much like duplos where I want technic. I'll be using a PSoC unless I decide exactly how I want the dimming to go then I'd just go with descrite ICs and mosfets.
Lol. I don't know that much about that to be able to tell the difference honestly. I do feel like the Arduino is limited, though, with its single thread. What I have done was to create an alternative to the NZXT Hue+. I have 4 strips I control individually using a windows program I wrote.



The problem I came across with the Arduino is has to do with timing of the speed of the effects. Lighting the strip takes a loop that runs over the length of the led since you control each one individually. Then, a spectrum cycle takes another loop (nested loops) and the breathe effect takes a loop as well; basically all effects take loops. Since the Arduino is single thread, you are stuck in the loops while they run and can't do anything so you wind up with massive delay build-up. Some smart people have written libraries that fake multi-threading, but those add a bunch of extra delay which will slow down the effect. It was difficult, but I did find a way around it. But, the way I'm using makes the delays dependent on each other so I don't have full control of them. I'd like to have full control because I want to sync it with my keyboard and mouse. I can get close, but not quite there.

Adafruit also makes strips called Dotstar. They have the advantage of not requiring a specific frequency to run at, so a Rasberry Pi will work wonderfully in controlling them. Once they release RGBW versions of them, I'll make the switch. Then, I should be able to put each strip on its own thread and have total control of the delays.

As far as dimming goes, my program controls it. Neopixels are controlled with a pwm signal and the dimming is done in the code. There's no need to add any extra mosfets. Just put a small resistor on the data line between the Arduino and the led strips for safety.
 
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