WS2812B IC RGB LED Strip,UL Listed,Pure Gold Wires,DC5V 3.28FT 144LED 5050SMD,Individually Addressable,Flexible for DIY Chasing Full Color Project,3M Tape,IP65(No Adapter or Controller)

First up, I’ll talk about the LED strips themselves: As an electrical engineer I can say these are well made strips! Flex PCBs can vary in thickness and quality. These appear to be made from quality flex material with wide 1oz copper traces for power. Each individual LED on the strip has its own 0.1uF decoupling capacitor, which is important to keep communication between LEDs from glitching. (A lot of cheaper strips skip this!) The only issue I ran into was the first strip I ordered didn’t have any adhesive tape on the back of it! I contacted BTF Lighting on Amazon and they replied right away, letting me know that the adhesive should have been on the strip and that someone had goofed at the factory. They provided me an Amazon link to a roll of 10mm wide double sided tape and offered to refund me that amount (around $10) if I wanted to just order it and put it on myself, instead of going through the whole return thing. That’s pretty good customer service in my book, so kudos to BTF! (The second strip *did* have the tape installed as advertised, so I assume this was an oversight at the factor like they said.) Each strip pulls just under 5A with all LEDs set to white at maximum brightness. Cooling didn’t seem to be issue, even rolled up the strip never got so hot I couldn't hold it by hand. There were no dead pixels in either strip and brightness and color were uniform and matched between strips. Now, onto my project: Awhile back I picked up a couple of those Himalayan salt lamps at a Goodwill (I know they don’t actually emit “positive ions” or have any health benefits, I just think they look really cool). They were just begging to be customized, so I decided to replace the stock incandescent nightlight style bulbs with WiFi connected RGB LED lighting! My “lamps” both had (approximately) 3” diameter holes drilled in the bottom of them for the bulbs, so I figured it would be easy to make a cylindrical replacement. These 100 led per meter strips ended up working perfect. Originally, my plan was to wrap the LED strips *around* a 2” diameter piece of PVC piping (cut to 120mm in length). I went for the 100 LED/m instead of the more dense 144 LED/m because I thought the latter may have trouble bending enough to wrap around the small diameter of the pipe. This turned out to be a non-issue as I ended up cutting seven sections of 10 LEDs (100mm) off the roll and mounting them vertically on the pipe; this allows better alignment of the LEDs and easier management of effects in the controlling software. The 100 LED/m strips also have the advantage that the LEDs are all spaced exactly 10mm apart, which makes the math easy! First I wrapped the pipe in two layers of heat resistant Kapton tape, to prevent the pipe melting when I soldered to the LED strips. Next I adhered the seven 100mm sections of LED strip to the pipe, leaving around 10mm of free space on the bottom, I also added three small tie wraps for extra retention. Then I soldered a wire from the DO pad on the top of each section to the DI pad on the bottom of the next section; similarly I soldered very short (3mm) 20 AWG solid wire jumpers from the 5V and GND pads between sections, creating a power bus. The result is that all seven sections act as they original did before I cut them, i.e., a single strip. I also took a 1200uF capacitor and fit it snuggly in the center of the PVC pipe, then soldered the leads to the power pads of the last section. (This helps smooth out the voltage.) Finally, I took some insulating foam designed for 2” PVC piping and cut two 10mm long sections off, then slid one over the top and bottom of the pipe. These turned out to be the perfect size to act as “buffers” to hold the whole assembly centered inside the salt lamp. For the controller, I used an ESP8266 based D1-Mini mounted inside a small 2”x3”x1” enclosure. I drilled a 1/4” hole in one end of the enclosure and a 5/8” hole in the other end. A 5.5x2.5mm barrel jack was mounted in the larger hole and a small rubber grommet was mounted in the smaller hole, with the 3-pin LED connector pigtail fed through the grommet. The software running on the controller is the open source WLED (available on GitHub), which provides an easy to use web based interface for setting the color, brightness and/or effects of the connected LEDs, plus it integrates with Blynk, Alexa, WARLS, MQTT, Home Assistant and more! The attached video shows the fire flicker and rainbow effects running in my smaller lamp. The video really doesn’t do it justice, it looks even better in person. The salt makes a perfect diffuser and people honestly think there’s really a candle inside when the flame effect is going.

I’ve used several versions of WS2812B LED strips over the years, and the BTF-LIGHTING “pure gold” variant is easily one of the most reliable and consistent options available. Excellent Color & Brightness: Each LED produces vivid color with smooth transitions, and brightness is strong even at lower power settings. Animations look clean with no flicker, and the color accuracy is noticeably better than cheaper strips I’ve tried. Individual Addressability: Every LED can be controlled independently, which makes it perfect for dynamic effects, patterns, and custom lighting setups. Works flawlessly with controllers like ESP8266, ESP32, Arduino, and Raspberry Pi. Pure Gold Wires = Real Reliability: The gold-wire LED construction is a big upgrade. These strips handle heat better and are far less prone to dead pixels over time. They’ve been running for hours per day without any failures or dimming. Build Quality: The PCB is sturdy, solder pads are clean, and the silicone coating (if you choose the waterproof version) is even and flexible. The cut marks are accurate, and the connectors are solid. Installation & Compatibility: Runs on 5V, which is ideal for most microcontroller projects. Just make sure to use an adequate power supply and inject power for longer runs. Once set up, the strip responds instantly to data signals. Great for: Ambient lighting PC case mods TV backlighting Holiday displays DIY art projects Home automation setups Bottom Line: If you want high-quality, dependable WS2812B LED strips with excellent color and long-term reliability, this is the one to get. BTF-LIGHTING continues to deliver professional-grade LED products, and this strip is no exception.

BTF LED strips for a project using an ESP dev board and I have to say, I am extremely impressed with their performance. The LED strips worked perfectly and the colors were incredibly bright and vibrant. The LED strips are easy to install and use, which made the project a breeze to set up. The strips are also highly versatile, as they can be cut to fit any length, making them perfect for projects of all sizes. Additionally, the strips have an adhesive backing, which made them easy to attach to the project without the need for additional hardware. The LED strips were also highly efficient, requiring minimal power to operate. This made them a great choice for my project, as I wanted to minimize power usage to ensure the project was energy-efficient. What impressed me the most about the LED strips was the quality of the lighting they produced. The colors were incredibly bright and vivid, which made the project visually stunning. The LED strips also produced an even light, which added to the overall quality of the project. They are easy to install, highly efficient, and produce incredibly bright and vibrant colors. If you're looking for LED strips for a project

Absolutely amazing original product. Very fast delivery and customer service was spot on! Just what I needed for my RGB project. Seller has lots of knowledge of led lights and gave solid advice! Definitely recommend!!

Perfect LED strips. No issues whatsoever. Great for DIY projects. Controlled via esp8266 boards.

See my picture, very good lights

These are great...work perfectly with my Arduino systems, great for art projects, computer controlled lighting etc...

I got these working with my arduino using the fastled library and they are SO PRETTY literally they have me drooling with how awesome and bright and colourful and amazing they are. I'm going to buy about 30 meters of them now and put them along every edge of my room and get it responding to music >:D