How to check an LED strip?

In recent years, LED strips have gained immense popularity. But, like many other things, they tend to break. Moreover, it is not always possible to immediately understand whether it works or not. There are several methods for assessing health.

LED strip is the most convenient and popular backlight in the world. But it may happen that after connecting it to the network, it does not light up. And it’s impossible to tell right away whether the tape itself is faulty, or the problem is something else. You can check this at home with your own hands.

If the tape runs directly from an outlet, then the first step is to try to connect it to an alternative power source. The simplest thing is either another outlet or a battery. Moreover, it is better to take the battery from the remote control or other device, the main thing is that it works. After that, the ends of the diode tape must be connected to plus and minus. If after such actions it lights up, then the problem is not in the tape, but in the current source.

In the event that a power supply is available, it will be a little more difficult to check the tape. The most adequate way is to use a tester or, in other words, a multimeter. It is a device that can measure voltage and current.

The check must start with the power supply. The wires are connected to the special connectors of the tester, and the other ends to the power supply. It has the designations "+ V" and "-V". Minus can also be referred to as "COM". Then we look at the multimeter screen and check its readings with the required voltage.

A multimeter is a very handy thing, but not everyone has it. The malfunction can also be determined by indirect signs. As a rule, these are external indicators. For example, when you turn on the LED strip on the power supply, a special lamp should light up, and it itself should make characteristic sounds. If this does not happen, then there is a high probability that the fault is located in the unit. But on such grounds it is impossible to say for sure, therefore, you must either additionally use a tester, or contact the professionals.

If the power supply is working, then you should start checking the wires and diodes. Usually, Broken wires are common on long specimens. Therefore, you need to start checking with them.

For this, the multimeter has a special dialing mode. After turning it on with the probes, you need to grab the open part of the wire and see the voltage on it. Unfortunately, this is not always possible, so you can use another method. On most tapes, you can see copper contacts that are located between the diodes. Current also flows through them, so the performance of the wires can be checked without problems.

In that case, when all of the above elements are in good order, you can proceed to checking the diodes. Some types of backlights are made of light bulbs connected in series, so even if one diode breaks down, the entire tape will not work. The multimeter has a separate function for this check. In most cases, it is called that - diode test. After turning on this mode, you need to touch the probes of the legs or contacts of the LED.Its serviceability can be judged in the event that it caught fire. This operation must be performed with each light bulb.

Sometimes, due to various circumstances, it is very difficult to determine the glow. Therefore, to make it easier for yourself, it is enough to see the glow of only one diode, then look at the data on the scoreboard, and for future bulbs to compare their voltage by this value.

Using a multimeter, you can not only determine the breakdown, but also measure the power of the LED strip. This is necessary to select the correct power supply. If you choose a copy that is too weak, then the tape will shine weakly, and if it is too strong, then it may burn out, or its service life will be noticeably reduced.

You can also measure power at home. To do this, you need to use the power formula: multiply the current by the voltage. Before that, the data should be obtained from measurements.

Taking measurements correctly is not easy. If you look at the voltage and current strength in two sections of the wire and calculate it, you can get only a theoretical value. In practice, there are losses that need to be taken into account.

This requires a coil of wire. The first measurement must be made on a wire 5 m long. The voltage must be measured both from the beginning and from the end. After that, the data needs to be written.

The same operation should be performed with a wire length of 1 m and 0.5 m. And also all the results obtained should be recorded and presented in the form of a table.

Then we proceed to the analysis of the resulting records. On them you can see that there were voltage losses of several volts on the 5 m wire, and there were almost none of them on shorter specimens.

Now we multiply the voltage value at the beginning of the wire by the current strength, while doing this for each of the measurements. You can see that the most stable of them is a wire 1 m long: it does not overheat and has almost no voltage losses. The power in this section will be taken as the power of the entire tape, but used only for one meter.

Now, knowing this value, you can determine how much power the entire tape requires. It is enough to multiply the power per 1 m by the entire length of the backlight. For clarity, you can calculate this for a plot of 5 m.As you can see, the value obtained will be higher than that which was obtained from the measurement "in the forehead".

So, here are some tips to apply when troubleshooting and measuring tape power.

• When checking the LED strip, it must be disconnected from the voltage source.

• Before determining the power required for the tape, it is recommended to look at its passport. There is a description in which this value can be written.

• If you need to connect the tape to a current source, but there is no way to do this using an outlet, then use ordinary batteries. But sometimes its power is not enough, especially often with long backlights. You can cope with this problem using a battery store. It represents several interconnected current sources that have common contacts in metal parts.

• If the standard styli are too thick or too large to fit into small slots, you can retrofit them with needles. It is enough just to tie them to the probes, for example, using electrical tape.

How to check the LED strip, see the video below.