Amazingly thin (2mm) addressable LED strip for cars

This material is a thin plastic strip that projects light out from its edge as a sharp line.
It's very reminiscent of the simpler electroluminescent or side emitting fibre products, but this version isn't just RGB, but fully addressable along its length.

The construction is very simple, and it uses the slimmest side emitting addressable LED tape I've ever seen. It has a USB powered controller, inline connector and fairly long cable between the controller and strip.

The controller uses what appears to be a customised chip - possibly a custom programmed and rebadged microcontroller, and has bluetooth, infrared and button control with a microphone for beat detection.

Without knowing what's actually in the chip in the analogue circuitry, I can only guess that the microphone input is just detecting audio amplitude peaks with some level of gain control.

The controller is actually versatile enough that it would be worth getting to control other similar lighting systems for simple fit-and-forget control applications. Noting that it may need screened to prevent rogue bluetooth meddling or accidental pickup of other infrared remotes.

If repurposing bits of this item, be careful to check the polarity of the wiring, as the cable connecting the strip to the controller was using red for negative and black for positive!

This item came from AliExpress (not a sponsor):-

The listing description is:-
Car LED Ambient Light USB 64 Colors Acrylic Strips 110cm Full Colors RGB Car Interior Hidden App Remote Control Atmosphere Lamp

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#ElectronicsCreators

[Lumibear.]

Hi Clive, it was me, I pointed you at this one. So happy you looked and approved as I have 4 of them around my place now, so good to know I won’t be exploding soon.
I have had the confidence to look at the app(s) as I use a sandbox device to control mine, they are programmable and can change how many LEDs are addressed. Handy!

You can even program your own bespoke effects and wear them, fun stuff, I love ‘em!

[Smoke]

"Power in the back, data in the front" sounds like a description of an electrician's mullet.

[Janduin]

Am I the only one that opens my eyes wide and stare at the screen anytime Clive says "watch your eyes, the light is coming back"?

[mazzg]

Clive I love sitting down and watching and listening to your very clear explanations! Thank you for what you do for us and keep it up!!

[Dranok]

2:50 Whoa there! They supply that?! That's not just "some double-sided sticky tape" that's artist's acid-free tape! Whoever these guys are they have some proper production value about them :-)

[Blowninyourphone]

I always keep a mirror handy when I am watching BigClive so I can watch my eyes when he cuts the lights back on.

[phils]

These addressable LED modules are a) awfully cheap for what they do, and b) extremely versatile. This tech has really revolutionised model lighting, especially for those who are into SciFi style models (such as spacecraft!). Nice that they also provide a caravan fridge de-icing scraper too 😀

[thetoasterisonfire]

For anyone interested, if you want more customisation and features you can use an esp32 microcontroller with some free software called Wled to control the led strips.

Its easy to setup and use and has a lot of features, like being able to control the lights with a website or phone app over wifi or ethernet.

You can also sinc multiple modules together over a network and can have inputs from things like buttons or switches as well as control relays for things that use wall power.

Neat pice of software

[HerbaMachina]

2:10 the odd number is probably due to a memory limitation of the micro controller, 24bits (RGB 8bit per channel, probably not using the W Channel) so a total of 154 LEDs makes 462 Bytes of memory and I believe arrays have a minor amount of overhead, plus any various global/temp variable space for any counters and it makes sense that it may be a memory limitation for that particular micro controller assuming it has about 512 Bytes of volatile memory.

[therealchayd]

I brought some of these for my car last year and decided to mod it to use with WLED, rather than it's own controller. One note; don't assume the wire colours are logical like I did, as in my case red and black were not 5v and gnd as one would assume and resulted in magic smoke being let out. Strangely, only the first LED took the bullet with the rest being OK, so just desoldered and jumpered it out.

[TheSlyMouse]

I like your LED test setup. its a nice way to seeing how many LEDs are on the strip.

[amorphuc]

Thanks Big Clive! That IS very impressive. 2mm even. Tiny tiny tiny!

[MrJozza]

Nice - these give the effect that the old EL wire used to, but without the noisy (well, if your ears are younger than mine) and fiddly to wire inverter, and hopefully they won't go dull after being in use for a while like the EL wire tended to.

[JanasV]

I believe the 154 LEDs that it drives, corresponds to the longest available strips that have about that much LEDs on them. You can make it drive more in the chinese app, I think up to 2048 LEDs, but of course then you'll have an external power supply because that won't pump out that much current. An ESP32 with WLED installed on it is my personal choice to drive these. I have 8 strips of these, I think 144cm long or so.

[albanana]

I wonder how you spread your time between tearing things apart, and trawling through AliExpress. Keep up the good work.

[artillerestrdva]

great job explaining this unique circuit just a great set up and great accuracy with colors.

[sublimationman]

Once again you cost me money, I just had to order a couple of these and I installed one today in my car and it's pretty incredible. Like 100 different modes (using the phone app) and nice that you can also dim them for night use. Thanks!

[SusanAmberBruce]

nice, I bought one, it's going on my soundbar, thanks Clive x

[seabassvn]

Love the pic of the circuit board and the schematic. Vey interesting and useful for someone who’s learning electronics like me! Thanks!

[cyberhornthedragon]

wow they went from the EL wire to full rgb addressable NICE