Review on BTF-LIGHTING WS2812B RGB 5050SMD Individual Addressable 16.4FT 60Pixels/m 300Pixels Flexible Black PCB Full Color LED Pixel Strip Dream Color IP30 Non-Waterproof for LED Screen, LED Wall - DC5V by Johnnie Trimble

First, about the LED strips themselves: As an electrical engineer, I can say that these are well-made strips! Flexible circuit boards can vary in thickness and quality. They appear to be made from high quality flexible material with 1 ounce wide copper tracks for power. Each individual LED on the strip has its own 0.1uF decoupling capacitor, which is important to avoid communication errors between the LEDs. (A lot of cheaper strips miss that!) The only problem I had was that the first strip I ordered didn't have any tape on the back! I contacted BTF Lighting on Revain and they responded straight away letting me know the glue was supposed to be on the strip and that someone at the factory had messed up. They gave me a Revain link for a 10mm roll of double sided tape and offered to give me a refund (about $10) if I would just order it and apply it myself instead of going through the whole return process. Pretty good customer service in my opinion so thanks BTF! (The second strip *actually* had duct tape installed as advertised, so I'm guessing it was an oversight factor as they said.) Each strip draws just under 5A when all LEDs are set to white at maximum brightness. There were no problems with cooling, and the rolled tape never got so hot that I couldn't hold it with my hand. There were no dead pixels on any strip, and the brightness and color were the same and matched between strips. Now for my project: I bought some of these Himalayan salt lamps from Goodwill a while ago (I know they don't actually give off "positive ions" or have any health benefits, I just think they look very cool.) They were just begging for a tweak so I decided to replace the standard night light style incandescent bulbs with WiFi connected RGB LED lighting! So I figured it would be easy to make a cylindrical replacement. These 100 LED strips per Meters worked perfectly. Originally my plan was to wrap the LED strips *around* a piece of 2" PVC pipe (shortened to 120 in length) I chose 100 LEDs/m instead of the narrower 144 LEDs/m because I thought the latter might have trouble bending enough to wrap the small diameter tube.This turned out to be no problem as I cut seven sections of 10 LEDs (100mm) from a roll and mopped them vertically onto the tube had nted; This allows for better customization of the LEDs and easier control of the effects in the control software. 100 LED/m strips also have the advantage that all LEDs are exactly 10 mm apart, which simplifies the calculations! I first wrapped the tube with two layers of heat resistant Kapton tape to keep the tube from melting when soldering. LED strip. I then attached seven 100mm long LED strips to the tube, leaving about 10mm of clearance at the bottom. Also, I added three small zip ties for extra fixation. I then soldered a wire from the DO pad at the top of each section to the DI pad at 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 to create a power rail. As a result, all seven sections behave the same as they did before they were cut, that is, they are a single strip. I also took a 1200uF capacitor and carefully inserted it into the middle of the PVC pipe and then soldered the leads to the last section's power terminals. (This helps smooth out the stress.) Finally, I took some insulation foam designed for 2" PVC pipe, cut two 10mm lengths, and then slipped one over the top and bottom of the pipe. They were the perfect size to act as "buffers" to keep the entire assembly centered within the salt lamp. For the controller I used an ESP8266 based D1 mini mounted in a small 2 x 3 x 1 inch package. I drilled a 1/4" hole in one end of the case and a 5/8" hole in the other end. A 5.5 x 2.5mm barrel connector was fitted in the larger hole and a small rubber grommet in the smaller hole, threading the 3 pin LED connector through the grommet. The software running on the controller is an open source WLED (available on GitHub) that provides an easy-to-use web interface for customizing the color, brightness and/or effects of connected LEDs and also integrates with Blynk, Alexa, WARLS, MQTT, Household Assistant and more! The attached video shows the flickering fire and rainbow effects in my little lamp. The video doesn't really capture it properly, it looks even better in person. Salt is a perfect diffuser and people seriously think there is really a candle inside when the flame effect occurs.