I was wondering about the possibilities of led fires as I am looking to install some ws2812b’s into a kerio cabinet that would be set to white 99% of the time and I came across this video that some of you may find interesting.
Hi and thanks for sharing , when I watched this video before I though he already set the scene to fail as a demonstration only given the big brick PSU on the left , power injection every 10 pixels and deliberately shorting the ldes.
Having said that it is still a good idea to be safe by adding a fuse as he mentioned at the end .
One other point I could not help wonder about is if you plan to use white 99% of time in a cabinet
then why go for all the trouble of ws2812b or even a controller . I have off the shelf white cabinet light
from IKEA which I am sure is safe and it is really not that expensive ( even with the zigbee remote )
Cheers
This post was mostly to show what can apparently happen if you are working with large power supplies and if somehow there is a short circuit in the strips or even pixels I would guess(heck even a mouse or squirrel could chew on them and create one). So for anyone thinking that fuses are not really needed I would make sure that you add them if your controller is not one of the ones that has them included. I know the chance is small but a little cheap insurance can sometimes go a long way.
But since you asked 
As for going with the ws2812b’s, my idea was that it would be easy to chain them together. For this I need 3 rows of them for 3 different shelf locations. I thought about just getting regular white strips but then it’s more work to hook them to a controller and would actually end up being more costly I’m thinking. I had planned to run 3 strands of 20ga silicone wire between the gaps.
By controller, I mean something to set their brightness and turn them on and off at set times. Zigbee would be ok as I currently have rgbw ZigBee Sylvania strips under the cabinets in the kitchen. The only problem is connecting those together with wires is not the easiest and they are also more $$. It still might be an idea as I have a set of them sitting here for a bathroom project that I was planning to do lol.
Anyways, I bought these: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0957BW9NL and am debating using them. I don’t know how long they will last though if they are on nightly with all 3 colors. I doubt I would have them on 100% brightness though. Actually they come with a usb controller that has them way under powered. They are a lot brighter when I connect them to a larger supply and a d1 mini. Cheap at $10 though for 16ft. I just did a little test with them on the old bread board and it looks like they need a really good power connection as when I tried to push their brightness part of the string started to go yellowish. But if I used the same power supply and connected them to one of those SP611E’s with the jst’s they were not only bright but all the same shade of white lol.
I dunno. Still up in the air about what route to go. After typing this I am leaning to the Sylvania zigbee controller/strips.
100% agree, fusing is critical when using high amperage power supplies.
For your use case @Jinx , I would highly recommend SK6812 with an extra white channel instead of WS2812B. The white color rendering index of RGB LEDs is absolutely terrible, it easily will look purplish, and it will require more power than pure white LEDs. SK6812 are the best of both worlds.
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WLED god is here?!! Bless us Aircoookie
Thanks Aircookie. I’ll have a look at them.