RGB LED Help
 

I need some help with a lighting project that I am working on. I have a total of 8 18" LED lights all hooked up to an RGB controller. When I did the soldering everything worked perfectly. Tonight I tried to string it in the boat and as I did it I kept testing the lights to make sure they were working.

The problem that I ran into is that after the third light, there is no green color. Every other color works fine. I tried resoldering the joints between the third and forth light a few times with no luck. I also tested the line going between the third and forth lights by soldering the line to the 4th light and then hooking up the RGB controller to the testing again - this time I got green all the way to the end of the line.

Thinking something was wrong with the solder joints on the 3rd strand of lights I recut the LED strip and soldered again. Same result - no green after the 3rd light string. All of the green lights show up with great brilliance in the 3rd string so it isn't like power isn't getting to a certain point. I just don't understand what I am missing. Can anyone give me some hints as to what is wrong?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Are you trying to connect the 8 18" strips in series? I would run them in parallel, this will cut the number of soldered joints in half since you wont be trying to connect the end of one strip to another. Also, do the strips and the controller have the same polarity? Does the LED strip need a constant B+ and switched ground to tripper the light or a common ground and a switched B+ for each color to trigger the LED? They can come either way and the controller needs to work the same.

I am running them all in series - they are actually all soldered together already and it was all working in the garage before I began stringing it into the boat.

For one extra test I hooked up the other end of the strip of lights (each end has a little pig tail that can be hooked up to the controller, and green went all the way through the set of lights. Problem is that I am not going to put the controller on the other end - it was meant to go to the end that it was hooked onto last night because it is in a more closed off area and is more water proof than where the other end will go.

Not sure why the green would work completely when going one way and not the other way....Just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

The strips and the controller should have the same polarity - it is all from the same company and it was working in the garage before I put them in the boat.

Were you able to sort out the problem? Even I am working on led strips and need some guidance in wiring. Is there some specific way to do it? I am very bad with these electronic devices:confused::confused:

Nope - still have the problem. I don't know that I will be able to look at it for a while either - it is supposed to rain all day here and I don't have the boat in the garage to crawl around in it and troubleshoot more.

Open to ideas though.

Ok Thanks for reply

I was able to figure it out although I am not sure why it did what it did. I found that one of my leads was off of the strip, as to not even make contact - not sure why part of the strip worked and the other part didn't, but anyway - I finished stringing my lights through last night and mounted them up. Now I just need to run power to the controller and mount that and zip tie the wires out of the way.