Hi Mike,
You’re not the first noticing that the slb is somehow involved in casting (black) magical spells. Whilest I don’t own an SLB, I cannot speak out of experiance, but I’ve seen enough frustrated posts resolving into stumped posters having to report that things worked out -somehow- after a good night sleep. Have a look at lens story here.
That is not how we like things to resolve. We want repeatable results with known solutions. Leaving frustrated and returning to find a working machine after a while is nice, but does not remove all the previous frustration. We are left with a nagging itch in the back of our head.
The led strip is something I cannot help much with either. I could go down the usual suspects like telling the strip is directional, look at the arrows on the strip; the power supply needs to be connected to the slb, not at the extra wires on the led strip and maybe some more captain obvious remarks. I however read between the lines you are more than capable to avoid andor correct the usual mistakes.
Maybe you are in a position to cut the strip down to a single led to see if you are able to drive these ledstrips at all?