I got some info on the sample strings today-He is hoping the covers arrive by DHL today. If they do he will ship out the samples tomorrow to those of us who ordered them. When I asked if both Ray's and Holidaycoro is using the same chip so if the sample string worked with the v3 SSC then their strings would work also he replied "I worked with the manufacturer to get pricing so that David could carry them stateside. Yes, the IC is the same regardless, the only thing that changes with the switch to 2812 is the voltage limitation. All of these strings, either from us, ray, or David, use the exact same IC, in fact the guts of the string all come from the same factory."