A closing down store near me was throwing away its display shelves among which I found a 50cm LED strip that looks like this:
[(you may click on the image to get a larger picture)
I could see the following markings on the board itself
barcode = LL50 I13430272
top side PCB = E187447 / HF-4 / 94V-0
hand written = R5Y (or R54)
bottom side PCB = LL50 V1.2 FRST KW09/2013
None of these references led to any significant discoveries on the various search engines that I tried.
Looking at the chips on the right side of the above image, I can say that the right most is a nRF24L01, then we have an ATMEL microcontroller and finally a L317LC regulator
The two “barrel” connectors at each end are directly connected to each other, and the outside appears to be ground.
What I’m wondering is what voltage needs to be applied on this board, and if a compatible remote controller can be found somewhere.
I do have close up images available, I simply did not want to overload my initial message.
As far as voltage goes, there’s not a good way to tell without a schematic, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s probably somewhere between 5 and 12 volts. (It could be as high as 24 volts though.) If you’re going to test it, I’d start low and slowly turn up the voltage and see what happens. If you’re lucky, these might have a mode where they work without a remote. Worst case, the burn out from too much voltage.
For a remote, there’s no way to tell. It’s likely some custom proprietary remote that only one company makes and without any marks saying who makes your strip, tracking one down might be very difficult. You might try asking the folks that worked at the store if they still have a remote or any information on it. It’s a long shot though as I wouldn’t expect anyone in retail to pay much attention to the manufacturer if it was even on the remote to begin with.
If you got them cheap and they light up when you apply power, I’d call it a win. If not, they might be fun to try and reverse engineer.
I tried with 3.3volts, but nothing. Then with 5V and the LEDs lit up with a nice fade in effect. However, only the red part lights up and stays there, no automatic change of color.
And you are right, even if I could use a nRF24L01 module from SparkFun, I would have no way of knowing what the protocol is between the remote and the led strip.
I’ll try to contact the store owners, but that may prove difficult.
In the end, I was secretly hoping someone would see the picture and say “It’s obvious, this is a XXXX led strip”…
