Depends on what you are working on and what are your expectations. 

If you are working on a small, standalone LED project, we recommend SPIThe Serial Peripheral Interface – SPI is a protocol to control LED ICs, which enables easy communication between controller and LED lights. SPI ICs produced by different manufacturers support different protocols. More LED CONTROLLER.
Capable to control up to 1024 LED pixels, this is a great device that you can even control remotely. 

SPIThe Serial Peripheral Interface – SPI is a protocol to control LED ICs, which enables easy communication between controller and LED lights. SPI ICs produced by different manufacturers support different protocols. More MATRIX is a choice for professionals that are familiar with Art-Net™ protocol, its Pros and Cons, and are looking for uncompromising, hard working piece of hardware. Great if you don’t plan to use our software.

LEC 3  is great if you want to use our software. Easy to use, fun to work with. The total number of pixels you can control is up to 4096 and thanks to our massive knowledge base, we recommend using this controller even in DIY projects.  

If possible, we would recommend to always decide for the strip that will last longer.

If it has additional protection in form of a plastic tube, it is great.

If you can use alluminium profile as another layer of protection, go for it.
Advantage of the profile is that it can also eliminate, with properly selected diffuser, the dots that are visible with almost every kind of LED strip. This way, you can achieve the effect of a continuous light source.

Analog LED strips can only glow in one color at a time.
E.g.: You choose pink color, the whole strip will glow in pink.

With Digital LED strips you can assign specific color to each individual LED.
This makes it possible to play effects or even video content.
E.g.: You turn your car into a TV. (Yes, we did that)

It doesn’t matter, but you have to take into account that the additional White channel changes the maximal addressable amount of pixels for the LED controller, thus:

1024 RGB pixels  🠆  768 RGBWRGBW means type of LED light or strip with separate white diode. RGB contains Red, Green and Blue diode and creates white by mixing them. You need one more channel to control White so output capable to control 1024 RGB pixels can control 768 RGBW pixels. More pixels

2048 RGB pixels  🠆  1536 RGBWRGBW means type of LED light or strip with separate white diode. RGB contains Red, Green and Blue diode and creates white by mixing them. You need one more channel to control White so output capable to control 1024 RGB pixels can control 768 RGBW pixels. More pixels

4096 RGB pixels  🠆  3072 RGB pixels

ICIC means Integrated Circuit, you can call it a Chip controlling set number of LEDs. Different manufacturers can use different chips and therefore you need to set up different version of SPI to control this. More stands for Integrated Circuit.  PixelPixel can represent single LED or a group of LEDs. With digital pixels, you have control over each individual pixel. With Analog strip, one segment is usually your pixel. Pixel is the single smallest unit that you can control. One pixel may require multiple channels to control different diodes, usually Red, Green, Blue and White. More LED Strips have built-in IC chips to every LED, which enables them to  control each LED individually.  

The most common ICIC means Integrated Circuit, you can call it a Chip controlling set number of LEDs. Different manufacturers can use different chips and therefore you need to set up different version of SPI to control this. More types are WS, TM, APA. 
Our LED controllers and software support most of the IC’s. 
You can take a look at our expending list of supported IC types.

Yes you can! You can export your animations and effects on an SD-Card, and play them directly from the LED Controller. You can also use lighting consoles and controllers (e.g.  grandMA) or web user interface via smartphone. Or even use buttons on the device.

Not good. Too much voltage. Turn everything off. Or run…

(Always remember to power each device according to its tech specs. )