Best wire for LED strips

[MichRX7]

Hello All, first year hear with some dumb rgb lighting and wondering what others use to connect from the box out to the light strip. I put two full strips on my wife's pontoon boat that connects to her phone via Bluetooth and lets her change color in and outside the boat and I used 4-wire 18 gauge I bought from (Yep) Home Depot. But this seems like it is much thicker than the ends on my LED strips and will be heavy and hard to manage in a cold Michigan winter and so I was wondering what others used.

Thanks!

[PhilMassey]

In my brief foray into dumb strips for the show, and for our display cabinets I used 22 gauge I think, and some of those runs were 20 or 30 feet. I've also used it to extend my 10W floods to about 40 ft.

[k6ccc]

I have been using four conductor speaker cable from Monoprice.com.  I'm using 18 guage, and here is my "pro tip".  When soldering the wire onto the dumb strip, alternate top and bottom with the wire.  In other words, solder the 1st and 3rd wire to the top side of the strip, and the 2nd and 4th wire to the bottom side of the strip.  Gives a lot more working room.  Obviously this only works if there are solder pads on both too and bottom, but I have never seen a strip that didn't.

 

[MichRX7]

Thank you both, I just noticed when I was doing my 9-volt testing that you can power from both ends. The soldering each side alternating like that is a good idea. I don't need to solder mine this year (knock on wood), but would not have thought of that without your input when I do.

[MichRX7]

The 22ga would be easier to work with and I believe that is the gauge on the actual strips themselves. And I, at most, would be going about 10'.

[MichRX7]

_{Just a note, I'm going to give these ends a try. It'll be nice if they work with just the heatshrink gun and I don't have to solder 72 ends and then heatshrink them.}

_{Electriduct Heat Shrink Solder Sleeve Crimpless Butt Connectors}

_{I'll give the results here after they arrive and test one out.}

Edited November 19, 2019 by MichRX7

[PhilMassey]

I think you are using 24 gauge letters.....................

[MichRX7]

Well, the results are in. Make sure you strip plenty of the shielding off the 22ga wire I bought so it is easier to manipulate the wires, but so far, so good (knock on wood). The hardest part is holding the wires in place and manipulating the heat gun. I have a Ryobi One+ battery operated and it only gets to 850 degrees (plug-in models go much higher), but within seconds it does melt the solder and shrink the wire down. The red sections are like a glue that sticks to the wire, so when I do it I get the wires in place and shrink first at the glue spot, then work on melting the solder after they are "stuck". The picture is a bit out of focus because it is 37 degrees outside, my fingers are cold and burnt from the heat gun and I'm a little shaky while I freeze.