Those of you who have requested one (or more) of my LPD8806 strips with diffused LED, I’m going to have to put you all on hold for a moment. I just discovered that the remaining reel of LEDs has the polarity reversed. I just built a dozen units (LED side only) and ten of them are now sitting in the trash. Unfortunately it’s not something where I can de-solder all of them and rotate. It’s easier to make new ones, just not any quicker. Me == Pissed.
Ashley, I have access to a hot-air desoldering workstation…let me know if you want me to desolder those 10 bad boards…within minutes I should have the LEDs and PCBs separated… in theory the LEDS will still be good.
I have a hot air station. Trust me when I say, it’s not worth the trouble to desolder them one by one. You’ll end up melting them before they come off. I’ve tried. They also don’t like to be reheated in the oven.
ouch. 
that sucks.
Meh, I fired off an e-mail to the manufacturer. Not that I expect them to “fix” the problem but more of an acknowledgement that screw-ups happen. Their QC isn’t up to par obviously. On my end it means having to rotate each LED 180 degrees. So … guess my weekend will be spent making more.
note to self….trust but verify!
So, we’ve boiled down the problem to the datasheet. It’s not that the datasheet was wrong. It was the wrong one for the product I received. The part number I received is R5050… while the datasheet is for the L5050… That single letter difference denotes where the notch is, negative or positive side. Now, regardless of the label on the package actually stating that the notch is on the negative side, I went by the datasheet which told me the notch is on the positive side. The vendor acknowledged this and also indicated they are no longer manufacturing the R5050 (notch on the negative side) and they are willing to ship me a new reel for free. Unsure when that will arrive as they could very well send it with regular post which could take three weeks. In the mean time, I’m moving ahead with the ones I have, they will simply get rotated. Ah the joys of product changes …