Wiring and LED suggestions for a custom bookshelf

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Hello there folks! I am building a custom bookshelf for my office to showcase some of my projects. I am going to run channels with diffusers on the underside of all the shelves and have routing for all the wiring.

First off, I want to do RGBWW LEDs at 60/m. I love the APA102 fidelity at lower brightness, but I have not found any options that include a WW option. That means I’m left with either SK6812 for 5v or WS2814 for 12v.

I am leaning towards the SK6812 since it’s an older protocol, but I saw that PB does support the WS2814 ordering now. The 5v vs 12v shouldn’t be a huge issue, since I plan on running power up the middle, so each section will have it’s own injection point. Would love to hear what folks think on the difference.

The shelf layout looks like this (note that the middle 3 horizontal shelves wrap around the corner, but only a little bit, and they will have the channels as well):

Screenshot 2023-11-28 at 4.08.08 PM
Screenshot 2023-11-28 at 4.08.08 PM701×581 21.6 KB

Here is how I am thinking about the layout:

bookshelf_with_led_paths
bookshelf_with_led_paths701×581 49.8 KB

One thing that I’m not sure on, is if it makes sense to break this up into 8 strips and use an expander for the output, or I could do 4 strips with each one being a longer run, but none would be more than 11 feet long.

Most of the time, I would want to utilize the warm white for the display aspect, but occasionally would want to run more run patterns across the LEDs and maybe sync it to music.

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Ok, so I have the shelves (finally), and now I’m trying to decide if it makes more sense to try to wire this up as a single strand, or have each section be it’s own connected to an expander.

I think none of the data runs would be more than 2m from one strip to the next, and could make things a bit simpler to wire up.

Any recommendations on wiring as 1 strand starting at the far right and snaking up, or start more in the middle and have each segment be it’s own data line.

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Ok, after testing with the longer data runs that I would have to do, now I’m thinking I should just pivot to using 4 picos, one for each horizontal layer to simplify things.

4

I’d go with the output expander if possible, if you have a good way to conceal the wiring.

It’s very reliable. I have personally run 30+ feet of wire between an expander channel and the first LED in a strand. (And it wasn’t even nice wire – just data and ground running over cheap 2-conductor lamp cord.)

1 Like
5

Ahhh… thanks, this is helpful.