LED Strip Light

Overview

An LED strip light is a flexible ribbon of surface-mount LEDs you cut to length and stick where you need light. The light comes from a Flexible LED Strip ribbon: a thin copper-on-polyimide circuit dotted with SMD LED Chip emitters in groups of three, each group fed through a Current-Limit Resistor that sets its current. Because the resistors divide the strip into repeating segments, the ribbon can be cut at marked lines without breaking the circuit, and rejoined with solder or clip connectors.

The bare ribbon runs warm and looks like a row of bright dots, so most installations drop it into a Aluminium Channel & Diffuser. The extrusion pulls heat out of the strip and the frosted cover smooths the dots into an even line. A separate LED Driver Power Supply converts mains to the low DC voltage the strip needs, and a Controller Module sits between driver and strip to dim and colour-mix on command from the Handheld Remote.

How it works

The strip is a constant-voltage load: the LED Driver Power Supply holds a fixed 12 V or 24 V, and each three-LED segment drops the rest across its series resistor. That makes the strip tolerant of being cut and rejoined, since every segment is electrically independent.

Dimming and colour happen at the Controller Module. Its microcontroller generates pulse-width-modulated signals for each colour channel, and a Channel MOSFET per channel switches the strip current on and off thousands of times a second. Raising or lowering the duty cycle changes apparent brightness; on RGB strips, varying the three channels independently mixes any colour. Commands arrive at the IR/RF Receiver, which decodes the infrared or radio signal from the handheld remote and passes the setting to the MCU. The DC Lead Wire and inline connectors carry the low-voltage output from controller to strip, letting runs be extended or split around corners.