we had half a reel of this left over and unused from a previous season: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/sparkfun-electronics/COM-12021/1568-1153-ND/5673739

These are “analog” RGB strips that have four wires:

• common +12v
• negative for blue LEDs
• negative for red LEDs
• negative for green LEDs

To power them we hook up their common + terminal to +12v power, and then we need to connect zero, one, two, or three of the negative wires to -12v depending on what color we want.

What we like about these:

• we had them around
• they're cheap

not so good:

• no protective coating on top of the LEDs
• The “B” marking on the strip labels the green LEDs and the “G” marking is by the blue terminal.
• Kind of fragile - easy to break the flexible circuit board when they're taped down to somthing (like a robot) and you yank them off.

we found this COTS driver: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01MRQFYJN

Its features:

• four low-side mosfet switches (we only need three, one each Red, Green, and Blue)
• screw terminals for power input and each of the four outputs
• four RoboRIO-compatible three-pin headers for control input. Each one has the customary -,+,Signal pins just like pwm and DIO cables.

We found COTS 3-pin female-to-female cables that fit and worked fine. I think they may have come with the SPARK motor controllers. If we hadn't found these, we would have made up cables.

They're hooked up as:

• Red: DIO 7
• Green: DIO 8
• Blue: DIO 9

Each color turns on when the DIO is set to output and is outputting a “1”.

Amr, this one's for you.