I already have the led strips, a 300W 5v power suply, a digital level shifter, a node mcu, a 1000uF 16 v capacitor, i need anything else? Someone have a schematic that i can follow?
Take a look at the WLED wiki as a starting point.
A lot of really thick copper cable, 15m with 5v LED strip is a challenge, make sure to do some power calculations and then wire thickness calculations before ordering! Transport say (not calculated figure…) 15Amps over 15 meters with max 10% loss, that’s going to need a lot of copper…
I just installed 20 m of the same type of strip. Tried with a NodeMCU but the memory was too low for that many LEDs. Switched to a ESP32 instead.
I use a 72A 5V power supply (overkill) and a 2,5mm2 cable along the strip, power inject every 2,5 m. I’d opt for thicker if you plan to go full brightness on white.
From the ESP32 I have a “sacrificial led” to boost the data signal. That is instead of a level shifter I guess. Made sure to check the “skip first pixel” box in WLED settings.
I also installed a physical button to the board using a wall switch and a resistor, like the schedule on WLED website.
hi there
do not use output 3 on esp8266 its blocked by a system process but wled shows up
in praktice u should be able to drive 300 leds per data out
u want to use 900 leds and a esp8266 can drive up to 1500 leds in total on multiple outputs but not on output 3
the max number of leds is ruled by datafrequency and limited by this
i drive max 300 leds per output of esp8266 and i never use output3
maybe this helps
On longer strings (20m+) I’ve had good success with adding a “Hi-Voltage” power bus in parallel with the string. The basic concept is to do 5V injection using inexpensive Buck converters.
It’s quite reasonable to find 5V 10A converters that can take 24V or 36V input and efficiently convert down to 5V. I put the 1st converter at the end of the first string and with a 10A converter I can power the first and second strings.
Typically I’ll power the converters from a 24V bus running on a separate 18AWG cable that is a quite reasonable dimension to work with.
The advantages of this design:
Needs only a single “bus” wire in parallel with the led strip.
Bus can be powered from one end
Converters can be added as needed where you like
18AWG is typically sufficient for 50m runs (maybe more with higher voltage supplies)
Only need one power supply capable of driving total Wattage (including losses) required
Cons:
Wiring can be tricky to make “neat”
Reasonable precautions must be taken with “bus” supply, it’s low voltage but still more than 12V.
Must take wiring and converter losses into account when choosing power supply. Not a big deal but you don’t get “free” power with this technique. Probably need a power supply with a 25% wattage increase compared to the max draw of all strips.