Happy New Year everyone! Mark, thanks for sharing the code. I uploaded it to the tree. Added 5 more meters as well for a total of 60m. Here is Fire Tree. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O85ZJ1cVDII
I read Keith’s earlier posting about this and am in awe of the power management.
cool! is that the flame pattern?
I’m with Andrew – what power source are you using to drive so many LEDs?
Setup is as follows :
12 5 meter ws2812b strips 30 pixels per meter. Each strip has a home run 18-2 wire for voltage. I used a single cat5 for signal. I soldered together a custom harness to distribute signal and ground to each strip. Power comes from 4 5 volt 70amp power supplies. A good rule of thumb is no more than 450 pixels per power supply. All of this is mounted to a board in my garage including the arduino uno which has a 20 ft USB connection into my house so I can change the patterns from the comfort of my couch. I’ll post a pic of the pdb later.
5V 70A? Is that a typo, or did you severely derate your power supplies?
Do you think heavy derating is necessary when buying cheap SMPSs from China?
Wait a minute… math shows that at 60mA per pixel (100% white), (30x5x12=) 1800 pixels would draw (0.06x1800=) 108A. That is not a small number of amperes. Is that what you based your supply decision on?
Math is not my strong suit but you are correct in calculating the amperage draw. I based my decision on using 4 PS because I was told by someone that uses these same powers supplies from the same supplier in China that anything more than 4 strips and things start to melt. I don’t really trust the ratings on a PS that cost me only $17 a piece from China. I installed the LED’s on the tree right after I got home from Burning Man (they were on my Giant Flamingo Art Car) and have been running them almost every night sometimes all night and never have had any issues with heat/ pixel burnout / weather etc.
Edit: I am not doing anything to derate the power supplies other than not running more than 3 strips per.
Oh my god that looks so amazing!!
Extremely cool. Nice work!
very cool! I am building a similar project at the moment 