How does rgb led strip work

As we increase degrees Kelvin the color changes from yellow to off white to natural white and then to bluish white which is known as Cool White. So which color do I choose? Notice how color temperature of a strip light affects the look of the entire room?

This totally depends on personal preference and the overall style and feel you want the room to give off. Warm White creates an inviting, cozy area. It is generally used in rooms where everyone gathers to visit or relax living rooms, bedrooms, dining rooms, etc. Neutral or Natural White creates a natural, daylight effect. This is the best selling strip as it mimics natural light and is comfortably used anywhere in the home. This is our most popular strip for under cabinet LED lighting.

Cool White complements contemporary and modern styles, casting a bright, fresh glow. Cool white is great for task lighting as it is a brighter, more focused light. The bright, cool colors are used the most in bathrooms, kitchens and work spaces. It is best to outline your whole project to see how many feet of strip you will be using total.

This gives you an idea of what to buy and the cost to do so. The LED strip lights are available in 3ft. It is important to find out if you want to purchase reel lengths and cut them down to size, or if it would be beneficial to have smaller lengths already cut for you. At this stage, draw out your project. Plan where the strip lights are needed, how they will be connected, and if they will all come back to the same power supply or have separate power supplies.

This step helps greatly as you progress through the next few steps. What type of power do the LED strips need? That is the easy part, the next step is finding the wattage. With the below chart, this should not be too terrible if you have already chosen your strip density and your total length. If you are running more than one power supply just note the length of strip that will be running off each to find the power supply size you will need.

This is where the sketch from before will come in handy to start considering where you will be running all the strips. Was the plan to run all the strips together in a long run? If your total length needed is over the maximum run length of the strip As our sketch shows, sometimes you will want to power strips coming from different directions into one common power supply. In this instance you will already be running parallel wires.

Wiring LED strips when you are dealing with multiple reels of strips can be tough but we have a powering and wiring guide that you can follow to map out your LED strip light setup. Connecting LED strips will be necessary for any strip project. We have some helpful accessories and guides to complete any LED strip connection.

Soldering wire and your own connections? Make sure to follow our soldering guide and our recommended wire for the strips is found here. Our full LED strip connector guide shows how to use these to make connections that will come in handy for any strip project. How to connect multiple LED strips to one power source? LED strip splitters make it possible to plug multiple strips into one power supply with ease! Strip splitters are available with 2, 3 or 4 output channels.

LED strip lights are typically dimmed with in-line pulse width modulation dimmers. These dimmers go on the 12 volt side of the system and wire in between the strips like shown. Also look for a light source's R9 value , which provides further information about how red colors are rendered. Need help deciding which color temperature to choose? See our tutorial here. Sometimes, you might need a punchy, saturated color effect. For these situations, colored LED strips can offer great accent and theatrical lighting effects.

Colors across the entire visible spectrum are available - violet, blue, green, amber, red - and even ultraviolet or infrared. There are two primary types of colored LED strip: fixed single color, and color changing. A fixed color LED strip emits just one color, and the operating principle is just like the white LED strips we discussed above. The most basic type will include red, green and blue channels RGB , allowing you to dynamically mix the various color components on the fly to achieve virtually any color.

Some will allow for dynamic control of white color temperature tuning or even both color temperature and RGB hues.

When running off of a standard mains supply power source e. This is most frequently and simply accomplished using a DC power supply. Make sure that your power supply has enough power capacity to power the LED strips detailed steps here. Every DC power supply will list its maximum rated current in Amps or power in Watts.

Not sure if you should choose between 12V and 24V? All else equal, 24V is typically your best bet. Read more here. The connection method will depend on the type of wires or plugs provided with the LED strip, as well as whether or not the DC power supply includes a plug. If you are familiar and comfortable with soldering, oftentimes this can provide the most cost effective and flexible solution. Not sure how or don't want to deal with solder?

You can also use solderless connector accessories to connect LED strip segments to power supplies and other LED strip segments. Despite their versatility and ease of use, LED strips are nonetheless bare circuitboard components.

Mounting the LED strips inside of an aluminum channel, along with a diffuser cover, can significantly improve the aesthetics of a lighting installation. Aluminum channels are typically long pieces of extruded aluminum in a U or V shape. The LED strip is them placed and secured using the double sided tape at the bottom of the channel. Then, place the black tip on one of the other leads.

On the other hand, if you have a common cathode RGB LED, you need to placed the black tip on the longest lead, and the red tip on one of the other leads see figure below. You can use the preceding links or go directly to MakerAdvisor. View raw code.

In our sketch, we start by defining three integer variables called redPin , greenPin and bluePin that refer to the pins that the LED leads are connected to:. Then, we also declare variables to refer to the potentiometers. The potRed will control the red lead, and so on. The potentiometers should be connected to the Arduino analog pins, because we want to read an analog value from the pots. To read the value from a potentiometer, we need to use the analogRead function.

For example, to read the value from potRed :. The analogRead function returns a value between 0 and The analogWrite function accepts as arguments the pin we want to control and a value between 0 and , in which 0 corresponds to zero brightness, and maximum brightness.

Sending 0 sets the LED to maximum brightness, and sets to the lowest brightness off. So, we need to subtract the result to I hope you found this guide useful.

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