LED strip custom lengths

binky · Apr 3, 2017

I'm looking for RGB 5050 chip (RGB combined in 1 chip) LED strip. I need 12m which is where it becomes a problem. There's lots of 5m kits, and lots of direct from China, get delivery in June.. so I'm looking for a supplier I can get the parts from in a reasonable time scale (like 1 week) if anyone has any recommendations?

Lurch · Apr 3, 2017

Why not use 3 5m strips? Does it need to be waterproof and in a continuous length? You can solder strips directly together tidily rather than using those massive connectors and large chunks of wire if that's the issue.

binky · Apr 3, 2017

I could join lengths but would rather have a single strip, single driver, single control. 2 off 6m lengths would work for this installation wired in parallel but you can't get 6m lengths. My concern is slight colour variations between 2 sets of lights, and having read around some websites, it seems more than 10 m could be an issue in its own right, I am assuming due to resistance of strip.

Lurch · Apr 3, 2017

binky said:
I could join lengths but would rather have a single strip, single driver, single control.

You can still have a single driver for multiple strips.

binky said:
My concern is slight colour variations between 2 sets of lights

You can get that across LED's anyway so it would be as likely to happen on a single strip or multiple strips as the LED's are binned before being randomly picked for the assembly of the strips, not per strip.

binky said:
having read around some websites, it seems more than 10 m could be an issue in its own right, I am assuming due to resistance of strip.

Maybe. Depends on the strip, might be OK for an extra couple of metres. You could drive it from the centre though, or from both ends.

Sharpend · Apr 3, 2017

The length you can use is dependant upon quality of driver, so I'm told, the last ones I did were restricted to about 8.5m per length, but did run two in parallel off one driver.