Comparing 3 Mode & Serial Wiring and Installation

While the Q 3-mode and Q Serial are essentially the same products, they are wired completely different. We're gonna talk about that in this video. What I have here is the 3-mode and serial series. The Q 3-mode, we all know has 3 programmable modes with a pattern selection and a color selection wire. The Q serial series has 2 serial wires, a white one, and a green one that connect to your serial link module and a ground and power wire that connect directly to your vehicle's battery. Looking closely at the Q serial module, you can see that the 2 serial wires connect into one of the ports. You have 8 available ports on your serial link module. Each port can support up to 6 modules. That gives you a total of 48 modules that you can connect on a single serial link device, along with your 8 programmable serial ports. You also have 27 programmable inputs that you'll use a software program to configure. You also have your zoning wire, we'll talk about that later. Your power and ground for your serial link and your USB cable. So the difference really comes down to those 27 programmable inputs that are available on the serial link module. So to understand the 3-mode wiring versus serial wiring, you have to look at it like this. You have 3 available modes on your 3-mode series, but on the Q serial, using the Q link module, you have 27 available modes to program either a single module to, or a group of modules. Another thing to keep in mind is that I have a tremendous amount of functionality that I can apply to my Q 3-mode or Q serial series. Every module can do 5 colors, but I have 3 modes. If I have 6 modules, then I have a total of 18 total modes. If I wanted every module to do a unique function and a unique color, I'd need to wire all 16 modes to their individual switches. However, on the Q serial, I can just wire all those lights via just 2 serial wires and connect them to my module just like I've done right here. So, again, taking a closer look here, I have 3 programmable modes on my Q 3-mode, 27 programmable modes. On my Q serial, I have 18 individual wires. I need to wire up on my 3-mode series to support 6 modules, or I have 2 serial wires wired up to my Q link module to support the same 6 modules here. That wraps up the wiring comparison of the 3-mode and Q serial series. In the next video, we'll talk about the software program for the Q series and how you set the modes, functions, and zones for each module.