How do you package your controller boards and hookups?

Questions
1

Currently my setup is very ad-hoc. I am using a small electrical box containing my board.

The board has a small hole to thread all the wires. The power supply is from my laptop USB-C charger which is connect to the outlet (the USB-C wire is thread into the box with a micro USB adapter), and my LED’s are connected to the board through jumper wires thread into the box.

Everything works but this setup is very flimsy, cumbersome and hard to move around without messing it up (the power supply, the micro usb cable going in the box, the control/ power wires hooking to the LED etc. jiggle around and will disconnect)

I’m trying to make this toy project into a proper device.

Ideally

  1. The “box” can connect directly to a wall outlet. (The box will hide the power supply I suppose). Or the box will have a DC jack which will connect to an external power supply
  2. The box will expose the power and control outputs through a common connection type i.e. screw terminal/ JST etc.
  3. The box should support an external antenna for wifi

:pray:

2

Here are a couple of my setups. Also note you can’t power very many LEDs (20ish?) through the controllers micro usb port w/out the risk of killing the controller and or melting something.

One with regular relay.

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One with SSR (bit messy as it was adapted from regular relay to ssr.

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One with big fuse block, amp/volt meter.

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One with a combo of 12v and 5v power. 12v is switched as it’s only used on holidays.

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Hope that gives you some ideas :slight_smile:

1 Like
3

I see that the controller is connected to the micro usb power. Could you power the leds and the board using the same power supply and skip the micro usb to the board?
How far is the power supply from the actual LEDs in this scenario? Can you run 5v from the box to the LED strip a long distance or do you place them adjacent to each other? I thought there was some limitation because of the low voltage that they needed to be very close.
Also I have some confusion about the power pins from the board. If the strip us long i shouldnt connect to those pins but rather connect the led power wires directly to a power supply and only run the control wire to the board?

Appreciate your help :pray:t2::pray:t2::pray:t2:

4

Yes you could do that. I choose to keep my controller powered separate from the LEDs so that I can turn off the power to the LEDs without killing power to the controller. Even when you turn off your LEDs they are still receiving power and over time it can reduce the life span of them (and you are wasting electricity). The relay is wired to the AC side of my big power supply, thus cutting it’s power when the LEDs turn off.

Generally within 10ft unless I add an inline data booster.

You can run voltage as far as you like provided you use large enough wire to overcome any voltage loss due to resistance and that your wire is large enough to handle whatever Amp draw you require.

If you are using a lot of LEDs you should power them directly from a power supply and not from the pins on your controller. Micro USB ports are not rated for the amount of current amperage that dozens and dozens of LEDs require, Nor are the other components on the control board. In LED Preferences you will see the ‘Brightness Limiter’ and under it it says: " Keep at <1A if powering LEDs directly from the ESP 5V pin!" Sending more than that 1A through it could either kill the controller, melt something and/or start a fire.

If you are powering the controller separately; You would need to run the data wire from your controller to the LEDs and the negative (ground) wire to either the LEDs power supply or to the LEDs. All DC negatives (grounds) need to be common (hooked together).

-If you are powering the controller and the LEDs from 1 power supply you need to connect the controller’s VCC (5v+) pin to the power supply, the controllers negative - (ground) pin to the power supply, and the data pin to your LEDs. Your LEDs +/- will go to the power supply.

*Note: Adding a fuse on the Positive + side from the power supply to the LEDs is recommended for safety.

If you are questioning your LED setup, it would be best if you could describe what your plans are and maybe even show a diagram of your plan. There are many here that may provide you with some good feedback for your particular situation. Those boxes that I have built may likely be way overboard for whatever your setup is. Several of mine are for Christmas Lights that are using up to 8 data ports and being controlled by xlights/FPP.

5

Thanks for taking the time to respond!

My plan is:

I have a small Koi pond that I want to light up. The perimeter of the pond is approximately 15 meters and there is a deck overlapping it.

I decided to start small (cheap). I purchased the Led strip (5 meters water proof) and 8266 board per the links in the first message.
In my home as a test, I attached the LEDs directly to the board with jumpers (the power + ground + control per some YouTube tutorial I found) and powered the board with my big MacBook charger (I think it is 65 watts).

Everything worked well in the house, was able to install and connect to the wled web-app etc.

At this point when I found everything working well, I attached the LED strip to the overhang of the deck (the deck overhangs the pond a bit).
The controller is in a water tight enclosure and approximately ~4 meters distance from the LED hookup point.

I suppose because of the distance from my Wifi (approx. ~10-15 meters from my router in doors) I am not able to connect to the WLED web-app and I don’t ever see the WLED access point presented in my wifi settings (I stand very close to the controller and search for the access point with my phone).

Per your comments, I’ve purchased a 5V power supply (20 Amps) from AliExpress

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005610546046.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.9.19b21802tO2w10

and decided to swap controllers to one with an external antenna hoping it will alleviate the network issues. (Still waiting for delivery)

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003804757059.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.order_list_main.16.19b21802tO2w10

I’ll also swap the thin jumper wires. I’ll try to use some 2.5mm electrical house outlet wire to mitigate the line resistance (for home use it is rated to 220V 16Amps).

I admit, 5v is extremely low voltage for several amps. I’m surprised it can go longer than a meter or two with such thin wires…

As a side note, what are your thoughts of using a CAT5/6 etc. cable - possibly pairing several strands together to achieve a “thicker” conductor and using CAT5 connectors for the outlets? Could it work? It seems more convenient then all the other connections I have seen and is easy to connect and disconnect.

6

With a 5m strip of 5v LEDs (I’m guessing they are a 60 LED/m strip) you may need to add power injection wires to the far end or you may end up with the lights at that end being dimmer than those at the beginning.

I would not use cat5 for power as it’s not rated for much of an amp draw. A cheap easy to find solution would be to cut up an outdoor extension cord. Though you may need to run the data line separate and just use the the cords wire for power. I would try it with the data and if it works then :slightly_smiling_face: else run a separate line for data. The data line does not need to be a heavy gauge like the power. Data has very little draw.

Best connectors to use would be xconnect, ray wu, or any other sort of waterproof ones you like. Aliexpress search waterproof led connectors.

I’ll talk about your Esp on your other topic :grinning: