I am w-ledding the walls at our house, and starting off with the support wall which covers one side of the driveway. Looking for some feedback before I continue, I tried to include all necessary information in the attached picture. I got a bunch of questions, but I will start like this and hope to get feedback on the setup. I use a separate data channel for the back side of the wall as I think I will probably have separate effects on it compared to the front side of the wall.
When this part of the wall is working successfully I have about 40 meters more wall to light, probably on both sides, so up to 80 more meters of led-lighting
Longer version:
You need to calculate what your expected loads will be for each segment/strip/section to make sure you allow for voltage drops.
Separating your power supplies and keeping them as close as possible to each section is a good general idea. Given the overall lengths you’re dealing with, you might want to consider a higher voltage distribution bus - perhaps 24V - and local buck converters placed close to each section. That reduces the maximum current in your bus wire and lets you use smaller cable for the same distances.
You’ll have to watch out for maximum data distances from the MCU to the 1st section and between each section as well. You might want to check out: Long Data Distances in the KB.
Thanks for your answer, dont you think 12V in each end of the 5m segment should suffice? I havent seen much support for 24V setups. The length of the data wire is max 1m in the beginning and 1m between each section, is it ok? It is actually 4 five meter sections for this stretch of the wall.
The next stretch of the wall is longer with 7 five meter sections., but it will have a separate controller.
Do you know if there is some support to link up several wled controllers over wifi?
which is the best controller board to use?
Do I need separate relay boards as well?
Signal ground and supply ground are the same thing, they must be tied together.
The only difference is the size of wire you need for each, there is little to no current in the data wires so 22AWG or 24AWG is fine.
Your power lines for the LEDs need to be much larger of course.
As far as data distances, if you’re talking a max of 1-2m from the MCU to strip and between strips, you should be fine. Looks like the board you spec’d has a levelshifter on board, that’s often requred for 12V LEDs.
I mentioned the 24V bus supply as that’s a simple means of reducing current and wire size in your power supply lines. It also gives you a very simple means of guaranteeing no adverse voltage drops. You simple add enough 24V to 12V buck converters to handle what your strip needs over it’s length. Each 12V converter acts as a “mini power supply” / injection point and will usually have a very short connection on the 12V side. I typically place those at the middle of a string and make sure it has capacity to supply “left” & “right” of the injection point. What’s nice is you can live with a 10% or possibly even 20% voltage drop on the 24V bus and the actual string won’t see a thing
the converter will happily convert from 19V to 12V.
You do want to size your main 24V supply with enough reserve to handle to worst case load, including the voltage drop losses.
With a “regular” 12V supply setup, there will always be a longer length of power supply wire, which leads to drops. How much depends on the size and length of wire used and the total current you try and supply the LEDs.
As far as multiple MCU’s, syncing using DDP is possible and effective. It really only becomes an issue if you’re trying to run effects on different strips. If this is just a lighting project, a single ESP32 can definitely drive thousands of LEDs using multiple outputs. As you try more complicated effects, it becomes performance limited. Checkout KB:Multi Strips for more details.
The relay issue can be handled a number of ways, but my 24V supply suggestion makes it easy to control everything with 1 relay.
Thanks again for your input. I have updated the drawing based upon all the information gathered:
Added a relay board to shut off the AC power line and power feed to the led strips (just realised while writing this that this will be turning off the supply for the second wall segment as well, i.e. controller and leds will be turned off without notice, which I maybe don’t mind, but I could arrange a separate power line).
Connected the controller board GND to the DC supply negative poles, and all DC supply negatives are also connected to each other now
