Red-White-Blue Jump

[George99]

I purchased a couple of RGBW strips and a voltage supply. Now searching for a remote & controller that can do a red to white to blue jump (for 4th of July lighting).
Surprisingly, I'm finding it very difficult to find a remote/controller to do this unless I pay upwards of $80.
I noticed several of them have a pre-programmed red-green-blue jump and was wondering if I can just reverse the white and green leads coming from the strip to get the red-white-blue?
Would the white be dimmer on the green terminal?
Thanks.

 

[Dave_H]

My specific knowledge of RGB LED strips is limited to low-end ones, but I can see they use common
control lines for each colour applied to all LEDs at the same time. Each LED has its own series resistors.
Therefore some change in sequencing could be done by re-arranging the common lines at the controller
end. That would work for basic colours. However, mixed colours including white would be affected as the
mix proportions would be changed by altering the connections. I believe level for each colour would be
controlled by PWM (but have not verified).

If your RGBW has similar arrangement i.e. common colour lines, but with separate white i.e. no mixing,
there is a chance re-ordering will work, and brightness should not be affected as the same resistors remain
connected to the same colour of LEDs. Otherwise the white will be off, and by how much is hard to tell.
You may just have to try it and see..

If the strip is clear you should be able to see if separate resistors are used per LED, and the common lines
would be marked at some point.

This being said, colour mixing for white and yellow in some of these cheap strips leaves a lot to be desired.
In my case the "white" is very bluish, and yellow is "dirty"; get what you pay for I guess but for this one only
$4 for a 3-foot strip, fine for experimenting.

Some fancier strips having individual LED control may use daisy-chained LED drivers, with serial data which
could only be altered by changing the controller programming; something you want to avoid.


Dave