I've been using this library for a while but just discovered this great forum

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I’ve been using this library for a while but just discovered this great forum with some impressive projects. I’m curious what those of you who’ve made very large arrays do to reduce current consumption? 60mA*2000 pixels=120A is a lot of current for my old house to deal with!

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This might be really bad advice, but I’ve been powering Neopixel WS2811 strips with very underpowered power supplies, and it seems to work fine – nothing has exploded or stopped working or even felt hot to the touch, and the LEDs look fine, no brownouts or flickering. I’ve been running 120 pixels at about 1/3 brightness (no more than 1 color fully on at any time) on one of these, which is rated for 1A output: http://www.amazon.com/RAVPower®-External-Standard-Flashlight-Carrying/dp/B006ZTMEZ4 The Neopixel specs claim that 120 pixels should require 7A on half brightness, but everything seems to work fine with the 1A battery. Can anyone point out reasons why I shouldn’t be doing this or failure modes I haven’t considered? I’ve never measured the current consumption because my ammeter only goes up to a few hundred mA, so I just plug stuff in and see what happens…

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I drive all of my strips off of several (old) computer power supplies. Find one that has a high current rating on its 5V rail. For example, this Corsair which can handle 5V@30A(http://r.ebay.com/GNTygv) There are some that can go upwards of 40A for the 5V rail. At that point, you just need 3 of them to reach your magical 120A.

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That’s 120A at 5v or 12v, though - that’s only 600 or 1440 watts - which if your house wiring couldn’t handle, you wouldn’t be able to run a dryer or a microwave :slight_smile: You should be fine.

Also, for me, it is rare that I ever run my led strips at full brightness - which often ends up scaling back my power requirements as well.

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@Ashley_M_Kirchner_No That looks like an interesting alternative to what I’ve been using: http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/200W-Dual-Output-Switching-Power-Supply-88-264VAC-input-5V-200W-output-CE-and-ROHS-approved/701799_289599892.html The higher capacity version of these have very noisy fans though. How’s the loudness on the one you linked to?

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Thanks @Daniel_Garcia . That’s exactly what I was wondering about. I’d forgotten about the lower current demand on the AC side.

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Mine’s a regular power supply. The original that was in it was rather noisy, so I ripped it out and put a quiet one in. Now I don’t hear it at all. And it sits right by my feet at my desk.