Iwas able to start diving into the world of LED strip lights late last week and yesterday. I tried to do an extensive amount of research before diving into this part of the project but still felt like I came up a little short in the knowledge department. I am using the Korjo Dream Color LED strips with the wifi controller to allow Alexa control. These LED's are 3 wire or contact point LED's where as it seems most others are 4 wire or pin strip lights.
I decided to just jump right in last week and start cutting away at strips to create custom lengths. I ordered about $25 worth of different types of quick connects. 3 different types and all 3 were less than stellar in performance. While I was hoping to avoid having to solder (just because I never really had soldered much before), I went ahead and jumped right in. My first mistake was trying to use a basic soldering iron and solder I grabbed from a big box store. The tip and solder diameter were way to big for these LED's. It was almost as frustrating as trying the quick connects.
Luckily a good friend of mine brought me over his soldering equipment. I nice solder iron with a small tip along with thread sized solder made these LED's a breeze. Like they say, proper tool for the job!!! For anyone out there unfamiliar with LED's or soldering like me, stay away from the quick connects. Use your money towards buying a good soldering iron.
Since LED's are becoming more popular in home theaters I thought I would go a little more in depth with what I am doing. I am not doing any amplifiers or large power supplies. I am just doing the 5v power packs in line after every couple of rolls. The baseboards of my theater will incorporate LED lighting. There is about 60 feet worth of strip lighting just in the baseboard. I will doing more in the ceiling cove as well. One controller is handling all of the lights it has a Y that sends signal to two different runs. One run is only about 15" before it terminates. The other run continues all the way around most of the theater and has two additional 5v power supplies spaced out. The test runs worked perfect with no apparent signal drop or dimming of colors at the end of the run.
For the soldering, I used two different types of methods. For some of the sections I connected two sections of LED's directly with wire (pics below). In other sections I soldered additional male and female plugs to match the factory plugs. These work much better than messing with quick connects. It did take me a little while to figure out how to get the silicone peeled off the tops of these. I bought the waterproof LED's thinking they would hold up to dust better. The silicon is pretty thick on the top so hopefully this holds up to be true.
The soldering was really easy (once using the right tools). I just tinned the wires, then put a small solder bead on each of the three contact points. I then held the tinned wire in place over its correct contact spot, gave the solder iron a quick press over the wire and contact spot and wolla!!
Some pics of the soldering of the LED's:
[IMG]

[/IMG]
[IMG]

[/IMG]
[IMG]

[/IMG]
Here's all the lights hooked up before I started installing it as a part of the baseboards.
[IMG]

[/IMG]
[IMG]

[/IMG]
I will have more pictures of the trim and how it came out with the LED's installed into the trim here soon!!