How do I drive this ? Bought strip on holidays

[Bumpy2020]

So I was on holiday in Jan/Feb in Vietnam, and there were LED lights everywhere (lunar new year)
I thought I would buy some, as it was cheap, I couldn't find any pixel strip, but did find one listed as RGB
+ and G/R/B which must be the - side
So I went ahead and bought 175mtrs of the stuff, and brought it back in my suitcase (YAY for free shipping)
I will use it to wrap a tree out the front of my place

"Pic courtesy of google"

Now for my questions
Now how do I drive this ? I think a DMX controller is needed ?
Its listed as IP65 (encased in silicon, with a sticky side to stick it to stuff), this should be ok around a tree which doesn't get too wet ?
Being 12v and non-pixel, how often is PI needed ?

 

[i13]

That is dumb RGB strip. Pretty much any DC controller should be able to control that and many DC controllers use DMX signal. You won't be able to get leaping/chasing effects with it but dumb RGB is still commonly used around here.

Are you sure that it is 12V? It has 24V printed on it.

Power injection will be a case of trial and error because it looks to be denser (LEDs closer together) than most of us use plus I'm not sure if it is 12V or 24V. That said, it is dumb RGB so power injection isn't as practical as it would be with pixels.

The strip looks to be coated with resin, not encased in silicone. This means it is likely to discolour in the sun but that has minimal impact on the actual light output.

It would be a good idea to post the controller you choose here before buying one because then you can be sure it'll work.

 

[AAH]

You can use almost any DC dimmer with those lights. Depending on whether it's 24 or 12V you should get up to 10m of strip before any significant voltage drop. The strip will probably be 15-20mA per colour for each cuttable section so you need to make sure you aren't overloading outputs. If the strip is 10 sections per metre for instance that would be 150mA-200mA per colour/channel per metre. 10 metres of that would be 1.5-2A.
http://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/Controllers#Feature_Comparisons

 

[Bumpy2020]

Thanks i13

Yes I'm sure mine is actually 12v (The pic was just from google that looked the same (didn't notice the pic was 24v)
I think its 60 LED/m instead of the 30 LED/m
I only said silicon as its squishy so assumed silicon

Understand its all one color at a time, I'm thinking of using it 3 pieces wide /// up the tree for added options ?
Can dumb RGB be any color like pixels, or is it Red/Green/Blue color only ?

 

[Bumpy2020]

Thanks AAH

Which of your controllers would be suitable for this ? (I have only used WS2811 so far)
Its 12v and it can be cut every 50mm (3 LED)

 

[AAH]

Either my DMX36 or 1 of the 2811DC boards would do the job.
At 20 sections per metre you're looking at 300-400mA per colour per metre or 1A total per metre. All of my controllers are capable of switching about 4A per channel but the 2 2811DC boards are limited to a 30A fuse for the 15 or 30 channels. This limits them to being able to control about 30m of strip total. The DMX36 has 4 30A fuses so you could control about 120m off 1 of them as long as you had 4 12V 30A power supplies powering it.