ALITOVE WS2811 12mm Diffused Digital RGB LED Pixel Light 5V Individually Addressable Round Bullet LED Pixels Module IP68 Waterproof DC 5V 50pcs/Set

This review is for the ALITOVE WS2811 12mm Diffused Digital RGB LED 50 LED set. I bought these with the idea that I'd use them for Christmas lights or just to play with. I plan to drive them with an Arduino or ESP8266 device. I decided to start figuring it out with an old Aduino Uno. I couldn't find a sample sketch or circuit from the vendor but there are plenty of examples on the internet. Google WS2811 and you'll get plenty of hits. This is a three wire setup and the wires are marked Red: +5V; White: DATA; Blue: GND on the amazon website and the LED's closest to the connector. I hate to admit that I tried every possible wrong combination of wiring before hitting on the right setup. The good news is that I didn't blow the lights up, which is a miracle and testament to the durability of the lights. Once working they are pretty spectacular.Instructions that worked for me:1) Quadruple check your wiring. The key is to connect the data, power, and ground to the female plug. The female end ( I know some of you are confused by this ) is the end where you have to poke your hook up wire into the hole to make the connection. It doesn't make sense to me why I had to use the female connector but I got zero lights until I moved my connections this end.2) There is information on the internet that says its a good idea to put a 470 ohm resistor inline on the data connection. I did this.3) Give it plenty of power. I was not successful running this from the 5v Arduino pin or a 1/2 amp wall wart. I was successful using something that supplied 5v at 2 plus amps. ALITOVE sells a power supply that I wish I had bought at the same time.4) There is information on the internet that says its a good idea to put a 1000 uf capacitor on the between the power and the LED's to smooth out the power. I did this.5) Use the FastLED library in your Arduino IDE library. From menus choose sketch->Include Library->Library Manager then search for and install the FastLED library. I tried the Adafruit Neopixel library but have not able to get it to work to date.6) From the Arduino IDE go to menus->File->Examples->FastLED-> and choose the FirstLight example. These sketches are well documented. You must change the define statement to match the data pin you are using and number of LED's to whatever is correct. Also check to see that the "FastLED.addLeds<WS2811, DATA_PIN, RGB>(leds, NUM_LEDS);" under setup in the sketch is uncommented. Some of the examples are set already and some are not. All other similar lines should be commented out.7) Compile, upload and you should have flashing lights. There are other example sketches for the FastLED library, plus info on the web.I'm sure there are other or better circuits that could be designed, or ways to get the Adafruit library to work. I just wanted to post a review and outline what worked for me in hopes that someone will find it useful.

Dec 12th edit:I have to eat a big dish of Crow, my first review was completely wrong. Rather than using a complete LED controller like DigiQuad, I was using a basic ESP32 with WLED to test the pixel strips. Originally the ALTILOVE brand wasn't working well at all, while the Rextin brand was functioning. I had planned to ship the ALTILOVE back and even had Amazon send me a return label. Then I began having problems testing the Rextin brand that was already hung on my house. After investigating it, I read from DrZzzzz that the ESB32 Data Output pins provide the absolute bare minimum signal voltage for the WS2811 chip. Even a short wire run can degrade the signal enough to cause problems. The ALTILOVE must have been more sensitive than the Rextin. I installed an F-Amp inline voltage translator right at the output of the ESP32 and that solved every problem I had. All ten 15ft strands of these lights work perfectly now. I was even able to chain eight in a row and they worked flawlessly, another inline F-Amp and the last two made it ten complete strings all running of the single output. Please disregard everything I said in my initial review. These pixels work great, putting them on the house this weekend.******************Completely incorrect initial review below.***************************************I purchased a set of these LED lights on Nov 22nd, brand was Rextin, $143. They have worked flawlessly. Color is great and they respond to WLED perfectly. the first two pictures ore of the Rextin brand.Amazon pushed me an AD for a set on Nov 27th at $115, I am guessing as part of Cyber Monday. Although they look similar, they are not, these are ALTILOVE and they are trash, buyer beware. 80% of the strands have failed, six won't turn on a single LED, two have a few that light, and two light completely. The tird picture shows a strand where only LED 1 lights.They are very obviously from different manufacturers, the wire color is different. But these ALTILOVE are garbage, waste of money and effort, if you bought them, test them as soon as they come in so you can return the defective ones. Only blessing was I tested before I hung them, so I didn't have to do a bunch of rework.Steer clear of the ALTILOVE brand.

Great product works great, I use these all year long on my house for holidays, and for accent lighting during non holidays, waterproof, and good strong wires. I use an external 5volt power supply to inject power to each 50 led section and a esp2866 flashed with wled to control them, I will be buying more for my yard Christmas items, low voltage so no worry about higher voltage running your displays.

OMG, I read most of these reviews and I saw where a few people (one in particular, who said, you need to start at the female end, people have problems with this I know...) said to start on the female connector, and hook end to end, etc. Well I did start with 1 strand in my house on my desk to make sure everything was going to work, and after wiring up my power supply, controller, and finally lights (after cutting off the female end), it didn't work! I then looked in detail at the product pictures, and I see where it shows the MALE! end and says input or beginning or something. So I changed it around and they work awesome. So make sure you know which end to cut off. It's also the one end with the gray tag that tells you what kind of lights, RGB, GRB, etc.I only got a cheap controller (SP105E) to use with them to start, i'm going to drill 12mm holes in jchannel and hang under my fascia board under soffit with LED's aiming towards street. So I still have to drill and install them all, but at least I know which end to start with now and will work on it this weekend. I might have to upgrade the controller later so that I can control each individual light if I want to, but this should at least get me set up and working.