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Unread 28-01-2016, 02:32
Breadbocks Breadbocks is offline
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Re: Serial LED Strip

My experience is that you won't be able to find much cheaper from American sellers. However, if you're willing to wait a while or pay a decent amount for expedited shipping, the Chinese option is huge savings on orders of more than a few meters. Adafruit's price for addressables is $30/meter, with 30 leds/m. A quick peek over to Aliexpress shows that $30 will get you 5 meters of 60 leds/m, with the caveat of 10-15 days on the free shipping. An extra $20-30 will get them to you in 3-7 days which is usually quick enough.

Definitely do some research into alternatives. Adafruit is a well known brand with a pretty strong hold on the domestic market for LEDs/strips. A few of the keywords to know are "5050 RGB" which indicates the size of the LED chip, as well as "addressable" which is the term for strips which let you control individual LEDs. You also may encounter "IPXX", most commonly IP67, which is a standard for waterproofing. Most strips will either be not waterproofed, or have that silicon coating that makes them a little awkward to work with, but makes them extremely water resistant for any FRC-related purposes.