been playing with a 160led/m 5mm wide 5m long COB strip for a project
Wled says something like 31A
ive set the current limit to 3A, and its bright enough for me at that, any more and theres no hope of seeing the colours right
wled says 3a, my usb tester says 1.2a?
at 31 A it would be brighter than the sun 
tend to believe visual evidence, unless someone can prove to me otherwise
WLED doesn’t actually measure anything.
All it does is take the maximum current you tell it each of your LEDs will draw and multiply by the number of LEDs.
When you knock the brightness down to 50%, it takes 50% of that maximum and tells you what it thinks your LEDs are drawing.
So if you want “reasonably” accurate reporting of your strip at various levels, measure the maximum draw of 10 LEDs at 100% White, divide by 10 and use that as the custom value for your maximum current/LED.
Remember, this isn’t a safety feature, it’s just a convenience.
One more thing.
WLED assumes linear dependency between current and perceived brightness (which is not true) to speed up calculation.
And…
Not all LED chips are made equal. Some may need more current some less. You should measure the actual current that your entire strip uses when fully lit up (white, 255 brightness) and then divide that current with number of all LEDs combined (R, G, B and possibly W, so 3 or 4 times the number of pixels). Then use this as your actual LED current.
Pretty much all of the 5V RGB LEDs I’ve come across need the 35mA “5V efficient” setting. Probably not many of the original 55mA ones around anymore.
thankyou for the answers
it does seem strane that wledsuggests such high currents
im building a couple of floor standing 1m strips, using a 2a charger for each
even with the whites leds on full it takes less than 2a and its blinding, even behind a diffuser
WLED’s estimation assumes standard 5050 RGB LEDs. Newer fancy strips like COBs may be completely different, you have to look at the specs of your particular strip to know what’s needed.
better to have too high expectations of led consumption than otherwise.
yes but 20x estimated?
theres enough data by now with all the setups for more accurate values to be available
if we all take measurments re setup its got to help lots of people
That’s a great idea in general, unfortunately reality has shown that the products people think they are buying don’t always match up with what they get. That makes it very tough to get “standarad” measurements that can be matched to the real world.
Best method is still to measure what you’ve got and work forward from there. It’s not particularly tough.
3A vs 1.22A is not 20x
anyway, you can enter product specifications into custom current field. and you’ll have better estimates
I run several hundred 3528s or 5050s at 50% brightness off a 2A USB charger, with no issue. I’ve used those current/voltage meter USB sticks to measure the current, and it is well within the 2A. Measuring is believing 
So the various installations I have are running from custom PCBs in USB stick form factor. Very handy. They have an additional pigtail for power injection which is sometimes required.
im runnning all my Projekts lower then 200LED an the Board power and check if the settings max 800mA
workes with a Externel Powersupply like yours and then connect the pin 5V from the ESP8266
so im only using the Board
