All of the parts have been ordered and now we play the waiting game. I underestimated the size of the MOSFETs that we are using, so I had to place an additional order for SOT23 breakout boards so that we can mount these MOSFETs in the breadboards.

(Scale to a penny, the black rectangle is the MOSFET)

I'll cover the operation of MOSFETs quickly, as they are a pretty important part of the way we control the strips of LEDs. If you're wondering, that's an SOT23 package, which is about 2.9mm x 2.5mm. It's pretty tiny.

A MOSFET is metal oxide field effect transistor, which is used to control/modulate electronic signals. MOSFETs are extensions of the traditional Bipolar Junction Transistor, by incorporating metal oxides into the formation and operation of the transistor. It's essentially in laymans terms, a variable resistor which you control across the differing pins.