Has anyone been able to find these in the US? These look very promising for a display saber or one that doesn't have FoC. I would love to find the ones linked in the original post in The US. From the description in the ebay listing they have a forward voltage of 5v at least if I read it right. That shouldn't be to hard to accomplish with a little work. And if there is a version with more led per in/cm then the uniformity issues would be solved. Please link if you have found them in US. Thanks
I've found similar things, except they're all 12v. :?
Exactly everything on ebay says 12v or more. Would love to find these in a 5v setup
Adafruit?
The are specified to work with 5V supply but that does not mean they use LEDs with a forward voltage of 5V!!! Actually in the video you can see that you can go down considerably with the voltage, common 3.7V supply would be more than sufficient. If you go above 3.7V, most of the current will be wasted over some kind of clamp circuitry to protect the LEDs which have standard Vfs (red ~2V, blue+green ~3V).
I do not know about 12V...
Most of these strips are 5v, but some are 12v. They are usually slightly more expensive as they include extra regulators to lower the voltage, which is then fed to the chips.
The nice thing about the 12v-strips is that they can usually operate in a fairly wide voltage range (like 4 to 14 or something), and the higher voltage means less amps and less power lost as heat.
5v ones are wired for Arduino style boards. The 12v ones are intended to be used with 12v dc converters for home accent lighting applications, such as cabinetry underlighting.Quote:
Originally Posted by profezorn
After experimenting with WS2811-compatible strips, I have concluded that building LED strings out of PL9823 LEDs works better. It's a lot more work, but the diffusion is far superior.
For more information, see this page: http://fredrik.hubbe.net/lightsaber/blade1.html
That's an interesting method you took for the LED string. Do you have any idea what will happen when the blade flexes on impact?