# Controlling LED strip with dmx



## Alex Forester (Feb 6, 2018)

Hi everyone! I'm an undergrad trying to light a ~13ft light box with LED strip lights. We've been trying to figure out how to control them with our ETC Ion board. We don't know exactly what materials we need other than the board, strip lights, and dmx box.
Also, if its possible, we also wanted to see about controlling individual lights in order to make a "chasing" effect.
If you've done anything like this I'd be so grateful for help Thanks!


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## Sean (Feb 6, 2018)

Alex Forester said:


> Hi everyone! I'm an undergrad trying to light a ~13ft light box with LED strip lights. We've been trying to figure out how to control them with our ETC Ion board. We don't know exactly what materials we need other than the board, strip lights, and dmx box.
> Also, if its possible, we also wanted to see about controlling individual lights in order to make a "chasing" effect.
> If you've done anything like this I'd be so grateful for help Thanks!


Can you be more specific? What do you mean by 'strip lights?' ColorForce Strips? LED Tape?


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## porkchop (Feb 6, 2018)

There are a lot of different options out there varying in quality and price. This thread has a lot of suggestions on different parts. Typically, what you will need is a power supply with an appropriate voltage and wattage rating for the strip you would like to use, a DMX decoder, and the strip in question. The DMX decoder will take power and data in and then will output to the LED strip. You can get LED strip that is all the same color or "pixel control" strip where you can control each LED individually to create animations and chases. The pixel control LEDs and decoders are not terribly expensive, but very rapidly eat up your console channels and processing power. To give you an idea in most cases you get about 170 pixels per DMX universe. If you have more specific questions, please ask them and we'll be happy to answer.


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