DIY Smart String/Flexible Strips

[gatorengineer]

I'm just curious and ignorant.  This is a DIY forum, why are we not building our own smart strings and flexible strips?

I'm certain there is a good reason (besides the unreal amount of time it would take).

[dpitts]

If there was a savings to be made i am sure we would. But when strips range from 20.00 to 70.00 dollars it seems pointless. Think of all those surface mount chips.

[gatorengineer]

As you correctly pointed out, time is a huge issue.  I bet I could get a job at McDonalds and pay for the strips and have money to spare in the amount of time it would take me to build one....so I'm not building one.  But are you saying it could be soldering too?  I'm not here to say I am going to do it because I have much better things to do with my time, but someone else might want to.  Surely there is a way to do it.

I also ask this because once I understand the workings and how to build it, it is easier to troubleshoot problems and make repairs as they arise. 

[Steve Gase]

We will do soldering to repair items, so there is an element of DIY at the light level. 
I might cut out and replace a bad pixel with soldering and heat shrink tubing.

[PJNMCT]

I'm just curious and ignorant.  This is a DIY forum, why are we not building our own smart strings and flexible strips?

I'm certain there is a good reason (besides the unreal amount of time it would take).

Just waiting for some designing "engineer" to create some for us! 

[jnealand]

This is a forum dedicated to products that RJ designs and builds for himself and then shares with us.  If you want to get deeply into the design aspects and want to design stuff yourself, then you will probably get more information by joining the doityourselfchristmas.com forum.  Just my 2 cents.  RJ does not publish circuit designs because that is not the focus here.  DIY for us is building the controllers and saving money on those.  I get double the channels here that I used to get with LOR and I also have inexpensive wireless capability.

[RJ]

Who says we some of us are not!

RJ

[jeffcoast]

As far as building your own pixels and strips, looks like that requires some specialized equipment that most of us don't have on hand. Don't they use some form of injection molder to encase the nodes? My guess is the flex strips are made on a continuous assembly machine that can crank them out in a few seconds, verses the hours it would take to manually place all the chips on them yourself.

Now if you could find someone with that equipment in the US that would be able to do it, that would save the money in shipping we end up paying, which at some point RJ mentioned he is working on doing that. We just have to have patience.

[rm357]

At less than $1/node, we can't even order the parts for the nodes, and then go insane assembling hundreds of them...

By June I would be a zombie... Must... Assemble... Node... Must... assemble... Node... Tonight... Must...

RM

[gatorengineer]

This was the engineer coming out in me to see how stuff works.  It appears this curiosity stepped over the imaginary DIY line for the forum.  I'll crawl back under my rock and just troll the forums absorbing information only.