I want to use a sk9822 led strip for my home, to build a light, it should be 6m long and I have a few questions about this:
Is 144 leds/m too much?
How do I wire something like this, because at full brightness and 144 leds/m it would pull around 50-60a, so I would need power injection, do I solder the strips together to make them essentially one big strip and then add injection points or should I buy 1m pieces and leave them separately? If so, if I use just one psu with wires to all the pieces doesn’t that essentially make it one big strip anyways?
Will there be a point on the strip where the combined 60a are present, if so, isn’t that too much for the PCB of the strip?
Is what im trying to achieve even possible? Or should I just buy 6 1m pieces and leave them all one separate PSUs with power connected to the beginning and end of each piece?
Welcome !
Cna you give a bit more details about what’s you’re trying to do ?
Are the LED behind a diffuser ? Where is it going to be installed ? Do you actually need it to work at 100% power white (adressable LED are not really made to work at full white 100%, and even if you do the quality of the light is going to be pretty poor (RGB light does not have a high CRI = ability to lighten up things nicely).
So basically, you should first check:
Do you need 144 LED/m or can go with 120, 96 or 60 ? 60 might be enough if put under a diffuser for under a roof for example
Do you need it to run full white 100% ?
For anything long, I would recommend to go with 12V, or even 24V LED. That will limit your amps, therefore the wire size needed. It might also allow youto put smaller power supplies
For reference, I run WS2815 (12V) x 6m @144 LED/m though AWG18 wire with only one injection point on a 200W power supply for a festival installation. I get voltage drop (even at 12V) from about half of the strip (losing color) if I try to do full 100% (in 12V any LED at 100% power means the strip runs at 100% power), and it gets dangerously hot. In practice, I run the installation à 50% of its power to avoid any issues if someone puts full white, and considering it’s never full filled for a long time, it’s fine. With 2 injection points, I think I’d be able to run nicely but If I had to do it again I’d proably go for more 2 injection points and thicker cables.
I would have liked to use sk9822 because they have a clock signal and therefore to my understanding can update at higher speeds than LEDs with just a data line and the sk9822 are only available as 5v.
I do not plan to put them under a diffuser so 144 would be nice if possible and the seller I plan to buy from sadly doesn’t offer 120 or 96leds/m strips but I would like them to be able to go to 100% power if neede, but it’s not necessary.
It is going to be installed behind what you see in the picture, where the old strip is but I plan to add aluminum rails, because the adhesion doesn’t work as well on the wood directly(as i learned from my old light strip)
If you want to stick to 5V, you will need injection pretty much every couple M I think, and you will experience votage drop along the wires you use for injection so you’d have to factor that in as well. Not easy IMO, you will struggle to have a regular white (and white is bad looking anyways on RGB LED). I’m not extremely experienced so I’d advise you to get a second advice, but I would not go with 5V if you want to run anywhere close to 100% white.
About higher speed updates, 6M @144 LED/m allows you about 40 FPS with normal “slow” WS2812/2815 on one data point. This is comfortable for most applications (maybe not yours), but not far from the limit.
If you choose to run with 5V, you can do it both ways:
1 big power supply with massive wires sending 5V to the different injection points, considering that the “far” points will get lower voltage anyways
Run higher voltage along the LED (24V, 48V !) and convert it on the go at each injection point (harder to repair in case of issues i’d say).
I think voltage drop isn’t an issue, since the 6m kinda loops around the board and isn’t straight, so the farthest point is about 3m if I place my PSU at the bottom and 1,5m if I place it in the middle of the board, considering the voltage drop on my injection wires I found this calculator(the text is in German but I think you can get the idea by the values)
