Hi everyone — Shicheng here. I run a small LED workshop in Shenzhen building specialty-wavelength strips (365nm UV, 660nm deep red, 850/940nm IR), and I have been lurking here for a while — the animated Christmas displays you all build are on another level. Looking forward to learning about outdoor wiring, power injection and sequencing from the veterans, and happy to answer anything about LED wavelengths or spectrometer measurements. Cheers!
Hello from Shenzhen — LED strip maker here
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thewanderingpine
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Both exist, and the difference matters more than the price.
Most UV strips (ours included) are “dumb”: constant-current, 2-wire, run straight off 12/24V. You can dim them with any standard PWM dimmer, but UV emitters lose efficiency and drift at low duty cycles — below roughly 30% on the dial they start reading as purple rather than UV, so if you need a real dimming range you want constant-current adjustment, not just fast PWM.
Addressable UV is the hard part. WS2812-style drivers are designed around white/RGB phosphors; per-pixel UV needs a driver whose PWM frequency and thermal path don't cook the emitter. Strips do exist, but “365nm” means very different things between suppliers.
So what are you controlling them for — UV accents that switch on with the rest of the display, or per-pixel effects? That changes what I'd point you at.
Most UV strips (ours included) are “dumb”: constant-current, 2-wire, run straight off 12/24V. You can dim them with any standard PWM dimmer, but UV emitters lose efficiency and drift at low duty cycles — below roughly 30% on the dial they start reading as purple rather than UV, so if you need a real dimming range you want constant-current adjustment, not just fast PWM.
Addressable UV is the hard part. WS2812-style drivers are designed around white/RGB phosphors; per-pixel UV needs a driver whose PWM frequency and thermal path don't cook the emitter. Strips do exist, but “365nm” means very different things between suppliers.
So what are you controlling them for — UV accents that switch on with the rest of the display, or per-pixel effects? That changes what I'd point you at.