Most addressable COB strips give you long zones and low voltage, which in practice means fat wiring and sagging brightness along a run. The maker, known as Intermit.Tech, has now custom designed and produced a first addressable strip of their own that attacks both issues: a 24-volt, chip-on-board, RGBW, flexible strip. At 24 volts you need fewer amps for the same watts, which allows smaller cables and less voltage drop, and the maker says this design would not be possible at 5V and much harder at 12V.
The construction details are strong. WS2814 integrated circuits handle power and data, with 896 diodes per meter grouped into 3.125 cm segments. That works out to 32 controllable zones per meter, or 160 zones on a 5-meter spool, at a width of 12 mm. There is an IP20 indoor version with 20 AWG leads ending in a JST SM connector, plus a silicone-extruded waterproof version that the factory labels IP65, though the maker thinks others might call it IP67, finished with a waterproof JST JWPF connector.
The measured numbers look convincing. The strip runs 24 volts with pulse-width modulation around 4 kHz, and maximum draw is about 70 watts, near 3 amps, under full load. A spectrometer test of the dedicated warm-white channel recorded 2973 K, a color rendering index of 93.1, and a flicker frequency of 4362.9 Hz. Demonstrations used Dig-Uno, Dig-Quad and Dig-Octa controller boards.
It is not all rosy. Efficiency is about the same as other COB strips, maybe 1 to 2 watts worse across a full strip, and pricing sits at $49.99 indoor and $59.99 waterproof. Shorting is a real risk, since two touching fronts can quickly kill a segment, and many 12 mm channels have internal ridges leaving only about 10 mm, which can touch the contacts. The strip cannot be bent, so it is slid into channels, with wider channels and aluminum extrusions 14 mm or wider recommended. Cooler white variants are not currently planned, and a half-power version remains only an idea.
Project by Intermit.Tech. Watch it on their YouTube channel: