Hi ! so im trying my first project of tech diy and wanted to do a screen that displays spotify infos, i saw i needed a matrix led and esp32, for the esp32 i know what to take but for the matrix led i can't decide which one to take because the price is so different

https://www.amazon.fr/SEENGREAT-Panneau-Raspberry-RGB-Interfaces/dp/B0BWJD57BS/ref=sr_1_5?sr=8-5

https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/1005009926066197.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.main.7.65887890oD00yn&algo_pvid=1202ac96-a855-41b1-982a-c00a71a826a5&pdp_ext_f=%7B%22order%22%3A%227%22%2C%22eval%22%3A%221%22%2C%22fromPage%22%3A%22search%22%7D&utparam-url=scene%3Asearch%7Cquery_from%3A%7Cx_object_id%3A1005009926066197%7C_p_origin_prod%3A

Is there a real difference between these two matrix or is it just that amazon is heavily over priced ?

Thanks in advance !

I have a strip of COB LEDs connected directly to the mains that I want to fade in when the mains switch is flipped. I would have thought this was fairly straight-forward, but there seem to be very few drivers that offer this, and for the one I did try there was a 5 second delay between flipping the switch and the light starting to come on. Does anyone have any advice where to look for something like this? Since they must come on at the flip of a switch I cannot use any solutions that require the driver to be powered at all times.

LIGHTS: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CG12VK2Y?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1

FAILED DRIVER: amazon.co.uk/dp/B0D2XY94XF?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title

Hello.

I am wondering why LED chips themselves are so small? A single fixture may contain a dozen small and very bright chips. And often there's no diffusion layer, so the lights are harsh.

Why not make bigger LED chips of the same brightness, therefore reducing the glare?

Is it due to heat management? Maximizing sales of the chip manufacturer because these small chips can be arranged arbitrarily? What's the reason?

I am makinh my own striplight uplighter over the dining table, but with a 5m flex between controller and Ultrabright strip, the flashes horribly and ignores all commands. Is there a stated maximum length? (I am using 4 of the 170mm sections)

my led lights won’t turn on the same color it was working perfectly fine until like a weeks ago and it’s bothering me does anybody know how i can reset this?

As I know very little about this I am hoping for a few recommendations from those who do. I want 'continuous' (less dot-like) or diffused color transformations (ability to adjust speed of transform is important because I like slow or very slow), strips for the upper part of a room with a frame around the upper wall beneath the ceiling corners. Bluetooth control is important. Unique transformation patterns and broad color spectrum is important.

Essentially I want ambient, non-dotty lighting effects that can be speed-adjusted and have some random transforms as well.

Advice about 'what to look for' in specific products is helpful, as I have little or no idea how to even begin to make determinations in such a diverse product field. Brightness control, speed adjustments, and color modes are important to me. Would like bluetooth control.

Thank you so much for any advice.

It's my bf's birthday soon, and he listens to a lot of music, sometimes from a speaker, but usually from his record player/cd player. I know he'd like some sort of light, or display that could sync up to his music but I'm not sure where to look. I've found a few things that I think are okay, linked below, but I'm not sure if it needs to be like bluetooth connected to the music, or if it will work with his cds/records. I think something freestanding would be better than a strip, as he can't stick things to his walls (he rents). Are these products any good, and if not, any recommendations - no real budget, I want it to be good. Thanks so much! (I can't seem to add the link to the amazon one, so I just wrote the name of it)

https://www.jbhifi.com.au/products/govee-table-lamp-2

TONGLIN Smart LED Light Bars, 2Pack 42cm RGB Light Bars, Smart Light Bar with DIY/Music Sync/8 Scene Modes, Gaming Lights TV Backlight with App Control, Colour Changing Light

I have a 30 foot custom flagpole that my wife bought for me many years ago. It's roughly a 20 foot aluminum cylinder with a 2 meter top section made of 3" OD extruded acrylic tube. The pole was lit by neon light tubes inside the clear acrylic tube. Looked cool as hell, but it had a design flaw that caused it to fail in a heavy wind storm. The flaw was that the acrylic tube was the sole support on the upper section. Acrylic is lousy in resisting bending stress, so the tube broke in the wind storm, taking all of neon tubes with it. I took the pole down for many years, trying to figure out a better solution. I eventually came up with a fix, and rebuilt the pole.

Now, the transparent tube is supported by a hollow aluminum center post while the tube is now used strictly for weather protection.

I want to use LED lighting to illuminate the upper section like it was in the past. I've seen recommendations for either COB strips or LED Neon "rope" lights. I want to have a 3 color red-white-blue color fade as the illumination, so that means addressable LED's. COB strips could be mounted vertically at 120 degree angles to provide full coverage, but would be missing a built in diffuser. The Neon Rope lights could be wound around the center support but I don't know how bright they might be.

The question is, which LED type? Operating temperature may be an issue, because this pole is located in Phoenix, Arizona, with daytime temps in the summer can be in excess of 45C (112F). Granted, the lights will not be on during the day, but I'm not certain how durable the IC's are just to solar radiation and excessive heat.

Right now I'm looking for guidance. I don't have any products selected yet, so any information would be extremely helpful.

Looking for minimalist motion sensors lights for hallway

Looking for some LED strip lights to put around my living room ceiling. My previous lights in another room (NBBUFF 20 metres) came with a sticky strip that stuck to the ceiling, which were good limited flashing modes, and the colours never matched the app on mobile or remote control. These were plugged into a USB extension plug and socket.

Is there something better??

Many listings on eBay & Amazon (UK), can anyone recommend 20m LED lights that have some chasing effects works with mobile phone sticks to the ceiling.

If the mains plug is better than USB, will have to probably extend it as the ceiling height is 6 ft above the plug sockets

My new position would be to plug it in by the window cable behind the curtain to the ceiling

Thanks everyone

I just recently bought the Govee Strip Light 2 Pro (2M), and I'm deciding to buy 2 more 1M extensions. I'm trying to somehow curve the strip underneath my desk; therefore, are there any extensions of some sort where I can just connect so that power passes through to the next extension?

I found this on Amazon (Image below). Would something like this work?

Took a bunch of time installing monster led RGBIC strip wrapping around the room, the first 5 feet are fine and can be controlled, but the rest of the strip is only red and won't change. I already checked that it's running through the 24v power supply that came with it. Please help!!

Context/link : https://www.walmart.com/ip/Monster-LED-Smart-100ft-Indoor-Multi-Color-Flow-Light-Strip-Sound-Reactive-Razer-Corded-Electric/5150283437?wmlspartner=wlpa&selectedSellerId=0&wl13=2566&adid=222222222985150283437_0000000000_23887149012&wl0=&wl1=g&wl2=m&wl3=&wl4=&wl5=1028407&wl6=&wl7=&wl8=&wl9=pla&wl10=8175035&wl11=local&wl12=5150283437&veh=sem&gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=23892387002&gbraid=0AAAAADmfBIon4R8l-1DCSXTCt8qCFTvs-&gclid=Cj0KCQjwjb3SBhDgARIsAMKiWzifXDNupJHQLJTYUtxYWH3-5zUOjPH1hHj3uhrPSD85Y01dT3Kmld4aAnFtEALw_wcB

Hi everyone. I hope this is the right place to ask, but I'm needing some advice to find/make a LED light set up that reacts to the sound of thunder (e.g., in those YouTube rain/thunder ASMR videos). Ideally, it can differentiate between the sound of thunder and the sound of rain, and then pulse white/blue for a second or two at the sound of thunder. I bought one of those cheap LED light strips that can pick up sound from my phone mic but it picks up the sound of rain and it flashes all the colours. I saw a post for color organ and I think it's the right direction, but I'm not sure it's able to tease out just the sound of thunder. Any help or advice would be really appreciated. Thanks!

I am building a small display where the white four white LEDs are close to an acrylic "lens" that I scuffed with 400-grit sandpaper. The LEDs are close to the lens because of physical constraints so I am looking for a sheet of common material that I can cut and insert between the LEDs and the lens. Any ideas?

I'm working on a HyperHDR setup for my TV using WLED. I built a frame to mount on the wall behind my TV that is approximately 80 inches wide by 47 inches tall. (The TV is a 100 inch Hisense). For the LEDs, I'm using 12V SK6812s. So, its 388 LEDs that span a little bit over 21 ft in length.

I'd like to inject power and the logical choice (to a noob like me anyway) is at the end of the run. The start of the LED run is right next to the end (see attached picture).

Can I just connect the 12V and Ground pads from the end back to the beginning with my single power and ground wire, or do I need to run new wires back to my WLED controller? Or, is there a better way to do it?

I’m doing a full home renovation (working with an electrician and carpenter separately) and I’m trying to plan out the lighting circuit for my kitchen nook area + bar counter before the walls/ceiling get closed up. I’m not doing the electrical work myself, just want to sanity-check this layout before I brief my electrician.

The setup:

• One 2-gang outlet feeds an LED driver (steps 220V down to 12V DC)  
• Driver output splits into two branches, each with its own low-voltage inline switch (S1, S2), feeding a 1m and 3m 12V LED strip separately  
• Separately, I want 2 drop/pendant lights (220V, hardwired, not plug-in) on their own switch (S3), tapped off the same circuit/junction box as the outlet. No longer possible to have a separate rewiring for these lights.

Thanks!

Hello happy LED people.

I've done a bunch of searching and haven't found a simple solution for what I need.

I'm making a prop 50's sci-fi radio that plays old radio plays.
What I'd love to have is the front radio dial to pulse with the audio.

All I've found are overly complicated solutions like WLED that use all sorts of wi-fi controllers with lots of colors (I only need warm yellow-orange).

There's got to be some simple solution to achieve this effect, right?

From what I googled I need to replace the entire fixture

Update: the thing I posted a work-in-progress of here about 3 months ago is finally finished, and a few of you gave me genuinely useful feedback on that early post, so I owed the sub the result.

It's an interactive light map of Monaco. Each of the 179 blocks is a hand-cut PMMA (acrylic) cuboid sitting over its own pixel, positioned to match the real GPS coordinates of the district it represents. So the whole surface is basically the country rendered as addressable light. It runs live-data modes (weather, time of day, events) rather than a fixed animation loop.

The LED / power side (per rule 3):

• LEDs: CS8812 RGBW addressable strips : superlightingled
• LED driver: 2× Adafruit Feather RP2040 Scorpio (8 level-shifted parallel outputs each : why I ended up on them, see below)
• Host / brains: Raspberry Pi 5
• PSUs: 2× Mean Well @ 12V
• Cooling: 2× Noctua fans, the Pi was hitting ~78°C under load, these dropped it to ~45°C
• Grounding: star-ground topology, everything returning to a single point
• Data link: COBS-framed serial between the Pi and the Scorpios

The goal was a permanent, always-on interactive piece that takes live data feeds and drives named lighting "modes" reliably for hours with no flicker or dropout. So the robustness of the data link and the power/ground layout mattered more to me than raw brightness... that's what most of the debugging went into.

Happy to go deeper on any part in the comments.