These strips are usually arranged in numerous parallel segments of a few series LEDs. The RGB strips can be a little different, but they work basically the same way. It looks like your strip is analog control and not digital (which would have little ICs in the strip to control individual LED color), so the specific color ground lines are all in parallel. You should be able to connect numerous strips in parallel - 12V to 12V, red to red, green to green, and blue to blue to blue. That is the same reason you can cut the strips into smaller segments if you want.
There is a limit to how much current can flow through the strip itself, which varies between manufacturers. Your other limit to how many strips can be connected together is how much power your supply / remote controller can handle. It should specify a limit in watts / current or total number of LEDs or parallel segments. That information should be on a sticker on the power supply or be listed in the manual.
From your product page:
Power 72 W
Which is 6A at 12V DC. That means your power supply/controller has to be able to handle at least 144 W (12A @ 12V DC) to connect two strips in parallel. Although, it is never a good idea to run something long term near its maximum ratings, so the supply should really be rated for something closer to 200 W.
If you are able to power multiple strips from your supply, it would be best to power them with a star topology so the current for each strip is separated. For example, connecting Christmas lights together end to end is daisy chaining, and the current for every light strand has to flow through the strands before it. Powering multiple light strands from one power strip is more of a star topology, with the current to each strip only flowing through itself (think of the power strip as your power supply).
W/sr is the density of light coming out of the LED, in photons-per-solid-angle. To convert that to irradiance, you need to know how far away the illuminated item is because the light is spreading out according to the inverse-square law.
1 steradian has a surface area of 1m^2 at a range of 1m, 4m^2 at 2m, 100m^2 at 10m, 0.01m^2 at 0.1m, etc. So assuming there are no additional optics, the irradiance at distance D metres will be 3/D^2 W/m^2 for your 3W/sr source.
To take a step back though, you get roughly 1.5kW/m^2 irradiance from the sun. To reach that intensity from this LED you'd have to be within 5mm of it, i.e. your greatest hazard is probably poking yourself in the eye. If it were a UV LED, the answer would differ, but this is IR and therefore very much non-ionising.
i have small rectangular box with blue led strip 450 nm placed on top of the box. what device should i use in order to measure its power density or the irradiance of my blue LED?
Best Answer
Second define exactly what you want to measure along with resolution and accuracy for each wavelength.
e.g. Is it relative to the Eye or to spectral energy. These are not the same thing.
If you wish to measure the Eye response level then use an Ambient Light sensor which is a PD with Eye spectrum Matching optical filter.
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/panasonic-electronic-components/AMS302/255-2655-ND/2125641
Then consider the ambient light that needs to blocked like a camera with a lens, recessed aperture, focal length and calibrate with a precision distance understanding the sensitivity to positional errors.