I’ve been building installs with addressable LED strips (5V, 12V, 24V). The same few failure modes show up over and over: dim tails on long runs, random sparkle or flicker, and connectors that become the weak point.

A few practices that helped me most:

Treat power distribution as the first design task: plan injection points early, keep feeder wires short, and avoid pushing all current through one end.

Always share a solid ground between controller and strip, and keep the data path simple. When runs get longer or environments get noisy, a small series resistor near the data source and a proper level shift (3.3V to 5V) often improves stability.

Assume connectors are “consumables”: strain relief matters, waterproofing needs to stay serviceable, and high current runs deserve more conservative choices.

I’m curious what your most reliable rules of thumb are for injection spacing, branch fusing, and debugging when things go wrong. If you have a checklist or measurement approach you trust, I’d love to learn it.