Hello, I've recently completed an arduino based LED project based upon a set of 5m LED strips with inline HL1606 chips. This basically gives me serial control of a strip of LEDs.
Now, my first version basically had my Arduino driving 4 independent strips, and I used the smaller molex (.062) connectors and I had a bad experience with them -- I don't think they are at all the right connector for the job.
Each strip basically has a ~30ft cable with 2 16 gauge power lines (running ~5V, 2A) and then I use a regular CAT3 cable for the 4 data lines (pulse, data, clock, latch).
So for each strip I'll need 4 connectors (arduino housing, cable end, cable end, strip end). A friend of mine suggested 7 pin XLR cables (like the kind used for tube microphones) and I thought that was a good suggestion. This project is mainly used for lighting bands at concerts, so I'd like something that is fairly durable.
Any suggestions? I get quite overwhelmed when paging through the connector options at digikey, jameco, etc, etc.
thx,
-chad