Stumbled across a very cheap RGB LED strip where I live in Denmark from the brand Frostlight. Priced at down to DKK 50 ~ EUR 6.5 ~ USD 7.5 in Fleggaard at Danish/German border but goes for around DKK 200 ~ EUR 26 ~ USD 30 in the ordinary DIY and internet shops (still cheap compared to other sources). For this amount you get a product which on the packaging is called “3 meter farvede LED bånd (RGB)” (which is a little gibberish Danish and not grammatically correct), English: “3 meter colored LED strip (RGB)”, containing these components;
- 3 meter strip
- Controller + IR receiver
- PSU (Power Supply Unit), 230 V->12 V, 22 W
- IR Remote control
According to the description this setup “does it all”; RGB multi color LEDS, controller doing colour change, fading etc.
- Length: 3 meter
- LEDs: 90 (30 LEDS pr. meter, 3.33 cm between LEDs)
- Width: 10 mm
- Colors: 16
- Burn time: 20.000 hours
- Silicone protected
The big question for me as a maker/hacker/tinkerer was; Does it use individually addressable LEDs?
And no, it doesn’t;
Obviously (as could be expected from the price), this strip is made from plain RGB LEDs with discrete R, G & B LEDS in a common anode setup (12V pin is common, current needs to be sinked from each RGB to control colour and intensity).
The brand Frostlight is unknown to me (they have a very non-informative website without any real product information), but they seem to supply LED products to many discount supermarkets in Denmark. They have a youtube channel (which is not even mentioned on the homepage) containing some product information. Even one for the “Frostlight LED farve-bånd”.
I was looking for a quick and cheap way to source LEDs for the awesome WordClock project by grahamvinyl (Arduino source code at github.com/grahamvinyl/WordClock_color_edit). However, it won’t work as all LEDs on the strip will light up in the same colour, but I consider using it for a cheaper tweak of it.
At least I’m confident I’ll find something to use the strip for anyway.
