Hello everybody, i’m really newbie in this LED world, but I’m building my house and want to use Wled in esp32 and home assistant. I want to use 10 meters (2x 5m ws2815) in a square shape (2,5m each side).
I want to make each side “individualy” to turn on/off. The principal effect is Wipe to light the full 2,5m side and stay lit still I press the button to turn it off.
I will have a 6 gang switch, each button turning on a segment of the square.
What do I need to make it work?
Can I separate each segment (cut) in 2,5m and connect the 4 strips in esp32?
Is it better to power esp32 separated from the LED strips?
Only 1 power supply can do the job? Or it’s better to have one power suply for each segment, since each button will turn on a segment?
As @cyberdine mentioned, there’s 2 aspects to this layout:
The power required and the data required.
Data is pretty simple, wire the entire strip end to end as one long data line.
You feed the data in at the start and WLED treats it as one long addressable strip.
How you get only one section to light or not becomes a software problem.
WLED has a bunch of tools that can make that very easy for you (Segments, ledmaps, etc.)
You can also send input signals (buttons) to WLED and have it react - turn a segment on/off, etc.
Power has different requirements.
You need to supply enough power at the correct voltage along the length of your entire setup so the LEDs get what they need to light properly. The strip you use will only carry power so far by itself before it starts to experience voltage drops.
That’s where voltage injection comes in, you add extra power lines from your power source to get more available power to the LEDs.
The choice of 1 or more supplies for the LEDs is usually about how far the power supply is from the injection point(s). The longer your wires, the bigger they need to be and the more injection points you need. So more supplies lets you keep your wires shorter and smaller
You need to figure out the maximum current your LEDs need. The power requirements for each section come from that and the layout possibilities. There are calculators that will give you a better idea of what’s required. It really depends on what type and the total # of LEDs you want to drive.
As far as power for the ESP, its usually best practice to dedicate a small supply for data. That way there’s no potential glitches affecting WLED from switching large #'s of LEDs.