5050 rgb strip questions

[mbasile35]

Hey everyone

I just got a 5050 rgb strip off of eBay and I'm a little confused on a few things. First, the listing says that the current rating is >6A. I took this to mean that when the whole 5 meter section was on (all three colors) it drew a little less than 6 amps. When I hooked it up I only measured (the exact number escapes me right now) somewhere around 2.5-2.9 amps. The strip is 5 meters long and is the 60 led per meter kind. Does this seem right? I could swear I've read other post that said they should draw around 6.

My othe question involves diffusing. I want to use the 5050 strips to line my roof and I'm trying to design some sort of mounting "cradle" for them with a diffuser over the strips. I tested both coro and acrylic and I wasn't impressed by either. The acrylic was sanded on the side that the light hit, and didn't really difffuse the lights at all, and kind of made the red blue and green LEDs within each rgb led easier to tell apart. The coro was a bit better but don't like working with the stuff. Any good ideas?



Thanks,
Mike

[David_AVD]

The 12V 30 LEDs per metre strips typically draw 200mA per colour per metre. So 0.2A x 3 colours x 5 metres = 3 Amps. This is usually the same for both dumb and intelligent types.