After deciding to make the last wire longer so you can contact the frame on both ends, grab your roll of wire for another piece and realize that you've been using solder wire the whole time instead of your tinned copper. You'll need to start this tedious process over from the beginning. Question life, question this contest, question hackaday. Try to figure out how to deflect blame to elon musk, jeff bezos, or congress. Failing that, continue to the next step.

Tell everyone you were drinking heavily, because being an alcoholic is less embarrassing than having made this mistake sober. Cut off a piece of (tinned) copper wire and solder and place them side by side so you can convince yourself that you aren't an idiot. Which one of these is tinned copper and which is tin solder? Maybe I'm playing a trick on you and they are both the same. If I'm being honest, I forgot which was which so just guess in the comments and I'll tell you you're right.

This looks professional because I am a professional. And in 20 minutes I'll have a business card to prove it.

That was a test to see who was paying attention. Since your test wire determined that hand soldering sucks and the $15 hot air special worked better we're gonna do that. Granted the house smells like cancer after blowing by the tape's temperature by about a two hundred and fifty degrees. Not the 'known to the state of california' kind of cancer either, the bad kind. So do this outside. In Florida. In the summer. I hope you have bug spray, I didn't.

It's a work of art. A Picasso.

For whole rows they actually go fast, just wipe down the wires with your iron and it'll solder right quick and in a hurry. Then wipe your iron around all the paste that got blown into the boiling rubber tape to clean that up too. Then wipe the top of the LEDs with your iron to clean them up.

This is gonna take a while. All of those little springs move, the tape is squishy, and everything fights back. The 24awg is so thin that it conducts heat everywhere and desolders the next four LEDs. Tight tolerances mean you need a tiny tip that has trouble putting heat into this big thermal conductor. For every one you fix two more are gonna break (look in the top right corner). Might as well solder with the power applied to the circuit so you have instant feedback. Also you'll have fake joints only working because the tape is pushing the led against the wire. HAVE FUN SUCKER.

Overheat one of them and realize that it failed closed so now you have over 230 LEDs that could be bad requiring you to start over from the beginning, and it's past midnight. Question yet again why you are doing this.

Remember that you got a cheap thermal a while back to steal the keycode to the nearby apartment's swimming pool. Crank the amps on your supply up and look for the culprit.

It's 3am and you have no SMD resistors. I guess we could use that roll of 30ft of 24awg. Should keep current under 1A. For 230 LEDs that's only 4ma each, far inside their 20ma rating even if they aren't all matched.

30 feet will be hard to fit on a business card. Idea: Wife's hair dryer has nichrome wire in it. That's resistive.

Not one but TWO gauges! Jackpot! A snippy snip snip and we got ourselves a resistor.