• One of a kind hobby project. I want to experiment with time of day controlled LEDs, and see how they work as a light based wake up alarm.

• I’d rather not break the bank for needlessly overkill connectors, the total for the project so far is only ~220$, and I only sporadically work on it.

• portability isn’t all that important, but the chassis the connectors would connect to should preferably be as small as possible. The PWM circuitry without connectors are ~8cmx3cm.

• I wouldn’t mind using connectors with more pins. The primary challenge is just finding a connector with both male and female socket plugs that seems to easy to plug in and out, within specs.

The connectors needs to be gendered so that input and output can’t be mixed up by mistake.

Sorry, my original comment was poorly written. While they do lead to earth, there is a mosfet in between each that receives a unique PWM signal. See the edit for more details.

By soldering the ends of the LED, do you mean the 4 earth connections? I should probably have clarified that the 4 “earth” connections only lead to earth when the mosfets connected to the LED is open. Each connection leading to earth is for either, R, G, B or W so they can’t be soldered together.

I haven’t noticed any difference in brightness between the first and last LED. Since the power is sent via PWM controlled mosfets, splitting the power wouldn’t work all that well since it inevitably have to connect the box (with the connectors) with the PWM circuitry.

I don’t know how aging affects the LED power draw, according to the manufacturer I shouldn’t expect more than 7.5A. When measuring peak power output, I get only get ~6A total though.

4 pins are for earth with each (measured) having ~1.5A going through them at peak brightness. The fifth pin must bear the total load of the four other pins.

Having 5 pins is of course not a strict requirement, it’s just the LED strip that has 5 connections.

Edit: I should have clarified that the 4 pins “leading to earth” are connected to mosfets controlled by PWM signals, so they aren’t directly connected to earth. Each of the 4 pins carries a unique amount of current. Their total current is flowing through the fifth pin. Sorry for missing out on that detail in the original statement.

A few meters LED strips.

According to the spec sheet only 7.5A should be necessary with a recommended 25% margin for a total 9.4A for the power supply. I rounded up to 10 for simplicity, and that’s the spec of the power supply I have.

Measuring max current at peak brightness is only at ~6A though, so 10A isn’t strictly necessary.

IP rating isn’t necessary, it should all fit into a small box with some circuitry for PWM signaling used inside a normal room.