A lightstrip is basically just clamping a light-emitter and some wires to a stack of batteries. It was added in 0.4, and yeah, a number of recipes are available from the start of the game.
In the current dev version, there are also a few recipes (very few) that can be learned by disassembling the end result, or reading certain books. In both cases, the game tells you when it’s possible to learn a recipe.