Colour changing RGB LED strip light , which proved to be one of LEDcentre.uk.com’s most popular products, allows one of the widest range of applications for customers. Users of the products regularly apply the RGB LED strip light in their homes and businesses, creating peculiar atmospheres limited only by their imagination. This form of LED lighting is commonly used in bars, hotels, restaurants, clubs or in homes in the kitchen or living room – for decorative purposes. RGB LED strip lights are used to enlighten edges of furniture, worktops, to give a touch of colour to walls, corridors, columns, steps and staircases, illuminate audio visual systems, is used as a party set or background setting for bands.

What do you need to operate the RGB LED strip light ? You obviously need the RGB strip itself, a suitable controller, and since RGB LED strip lights run at low voltage, you need a suitable transformer. The number of effects you can achieve with your RGB LED strip light depends on both the tape, and the controller you apply it with. The simplest RGB LED strip has a fixed set of colours that can be displayed in a pre-programmed sequence.

There are several technical details you will have to pay attention to when buying RGB LED strip lights. RGB LED strips operate on low voltage, so connecting them to the mains is not possible. If you would like to run them at mains, you need to include an LED transformer between the mains and the LED strips, or you can usually run them on batteries of the necessary voltage. LED lights require special transformers: wire-wound, low voltage, most of them DC and constant voltage. Electronic transformers are not suitable for running LED lights. If you run them on batteries, in cars, caravans, boats or yachts, voltage often fluctuates when the engine is on, so you should always check the voltage tolerance of the LED lights. The general factors that determine the RGB LED light are the following: the number of LEDs per metre, the size of the LED, the technology of the LED , the beam angle of the lights and the IP rating of the light, determining its degree of water resistance, and the direction of the diodes (which can face upwards or can be side-mounted).

The other significant factor determining the number of effects achievable with the RGB LED strip light is the RGB controller . The widest range of effects can be achieved with DMX RGB controllers, which allows you to set millions of tones.

The technical details of the RGB controller determines how much power can run through it – therefore the length of LED strip light you can connect it to. For instance, if the controller can carry, let’s say 140W power, and the performance of the RGB LED strip light you will use is 7W per metre, than you can connect 140/7=20 metres of strip lights to it. If you want to control more than this amount, you will need an amplifier to forward the signal of the RGB controller to the rest of the strips. All additional amplifiers need to be powered directly, and not via the RGB controller. Connectivity is another issue you have to pay attention to. Both the strip light and the controller will need to have the same connection type. RGB LEDs are four pinned LEDs. If the three colours are negative, and the fourth pin is the common positive pole for them, the connection is common anode. If the pins for the colours are positive, and the fourth pin is negative pole, the connection is common cathode.

So, how exactly does RGB technology work? The so-call RGB LEDs contain three separate LEDs melt together, emitting one single beam of light: red, green and blue. Combining the rate of these three colour lights allow you to create the colours of the full spectrum, and with the help of DMX RGB controllers millions of tones can be achieved. The RGB controller works the PWM (pulse-width modulation) technique, turning the individual LEDs (red, green and blue) on and off at a certain frequency. The frequency must be over 50Hz at least, so that the flicker of lights would not be detected by the human eye. Tones of colours are created with the rate of on-off mode for the individual lights. Forinstance, if you turn the blue light off completely, the remaining green and red will create a yellow light. If you increase the “on” mode of blue, it will start to turn light green.

The number of combination depends on the knowledge of the lights and the controller. Simple RGB LED tapes are capable of emitting a limited number of colours, usually ranging from four to 16. These LED strip lights require less complicated RGB controllers, and therefore the number of effects that can be achieved are limited, but depending on the controller, you can usually choose between displaying only one of these colours, or the pace they rotate or flicker. The range of tones emitted can be widened with a different type of RGB LED striplight and a controller allowing more functions. RGB controllers can be manual,automatic, semi-automatic, pre-set sequence or DMX. Like I mentioned before, DMX RGB controllers allow you the widest range of settings at the moment, with millions of tones created, setting this to any pace you like or even to the rhythm of music.

Besides the regular RGB LED strip lights which can emit several shades of colours, but only one at a time, exist the multiple colour strips – also called magic LED strips or pixel LED strip lights. This type of RGB LED strip light requires a special RGB controller. RGB LED Strip lights are most often sold with the controllers suitable for their operation, or there is a list of recommended controllers indicated at the strip light’s description.