First of all, maybe my english is not top notch, please forgive me, im from Quebec, That said,
I just received from btf things for a new project.
my friend babrber shop want to have is 5 mirror lit by the same source every mirror are 6feet for from the other one, so there it is:
i bought 5 ws2815 60led/m. on the package it was write 90w each, so i bought a 12v 50amp for 600w i guess. the questions are:
Concerning wled, i cant put more then 800 led ? i guess every 5m is 300, 300/600/900/1200/1500.
Is there a solution to solve this ?
In wled, i raise from 850ma to 2000ma, it look greater, But as soon as i plug a seconde strip, the brightness drop. (in my eye, im only at 180w yet) why ? will i need power injection ?
It wasn’t clear what you meant by ‘from the same source’. Do you want the effects to be copied so that each mirror shows exactly the same pattern?
If so, then you can get small inexpensive ‘TTL Signal LED Amplifier Repeaters’, which are much more reliable than simply splicing wires.
First off, from a data POV 1500 or 5000 LEDs is a possibility with an ESP32.
You may have performance issues if you were trying to do some effects along 5000 LED’s, but simple static colour displays will work with brightness control.
From a power POV things are completely different.
Your LEDs may be able to draw 90W for the entire 5m(?) strip, but only if you make sure there is enough power for every LED. The wire/strip from the mfg. that connects the LEDs together is only capable of carry so much current. Experience has shown that typically you’ll be lucky to get 100 12V LEDs (and in some cases less) along the base strip before you need power injection.
If you can draw this out with distances and LED counts, we can probably give you a better idea of what kind of layout will work for you.
There’s no 800 limit, it just recommends you to not use more cause refresh rate will get slow.
To avoid that just use multiple outputs.
E.g.put the controller in the center of the installation with one string going to the left and one to the right, on different outputs.
For Power wiring - when power wires get too long, the supplied voltage to the LEDs drops below proper values to supply power. LED colours start to display incorrectly or not at all.
Use proper size wire to handle the current you need over the distance it has to travel.
For Data wiring - the data stream will only travel so far before it becomes corrupted and you get flashing/flickering LED displays. Doesn’t depend on wire size, just length and layout of wire, best to stick with smaller sized data wire.
Pairing the data wire with a dedicated ground wire can help. As data distance gets too long, you may need to look at TxRx differential pairs - see: https://kno.wled.ge/advanced/longdata/
Those may or may not work depending on your setup.
A differential pair will work over many 10’s → 100’s of meters.
In bulk they’re typically $0.75 each (or less).
There’s a reason those type of RS485 pairs are standard in industry lighting setups.
They work well over very large setups.
The reason I like them is because I have some mirrored setups, where the data line becomes a tree. There the splitters are necessary (something to do with signal reflection?). Yes, it’s a bit niche, but it is a useful tool.
You can always use the tools you prefer.
Incidentally, you can connect up to 32 receivers to the same transmitter line if you need to do “mirroring” as you described.
By design, those boards all have termination resistors on board that are spec’d to deal with signal reflections.
I have MAX485 boards to realize RS485 (multidrop RS232, as I understood it) for a ModBus application. I hadn’t realized the wider usage. Time for more study. Thx.
My previous comments re: Power vs Data wiring requirements still stand.
You may have reasonable success with just using a levelshifter to drive data over 20’, there’s no way to know without trying.
Personally, I would just implement a TxRX differential pair in lieu of the levelshifter and be done with the whole data over distance worry. The cost of the 2 boards is very low and the wiring required is very simple.
