Hey guys. I’m a newb with led strips. The single color led strips seem very self explanatory. They have two connections for power, a red and a black.
Now the rgb led strips have me stumped and I’m sure there is something I’m missing. I have a hot tub with color changing single led bulbs all throughout it. Each bulb is tapped into a power and ground wire that runs around the whole hot tub. They are all tapped into that same power wire. Then the colors are controlled through the hot tubs controller. Long story short, the waterfall leds went out and they don’t make a replacement led for it anymore. I bought a roll of rgb led strip. I want to just put it in the whole where the old leds were and tap them into the same power and ground wires as the other ones are since those wires are already on a controller. Question is how in the heck do you run power to the rgb strips since there are 4 wires?
Thanks ahead and any help is appreciated.
There is likely a single control for each color and one power. If the original LEDs used only 3 connections, it’s possible that it was using a power and a ground to run the lights, and an RGB protocol for use on a single line with multiple addressed LEDS
Is it possible to show a picture of the original LEDs?
Absolutely. I will take them as soon as I get home.
Ok so this might be one problem. The power adapter that came with the strip has an output of 12v at 5.0 amps. Just took the shell off of the hot tub and the power adapter for that is 5v at 4.0 amps. It runs into a led controller that outputs 5v DC but doesn’t say how many amps. The only thing coming out of that controller is a red and a black wire which runs around the whole hot tub, and each of the rgb leds tap into the red and black wire and controls the leds.
How many wires are connected to the original LEDs ? Just the above red and black wires, or those plus the 5V power and ground (= 4 wires) ? And these LEDs are all RGB ?