Power supply and wire section questions

Hardware
1

Hi all,

I have a few questions about wiring a WLED setup. I would like to power three strips:

  • 80 cm each, 60 leds per meter so 50 leds per strip,
  • Using WS2812B at 5v.

So the setup is about 150 leds * 60mA = 9A and 9A * 5v = 45w. To prevent the power supply from running at its full capacity, I guess I should look at a 50w power supply. Am I right?

I also struggle to define which cable section to use. Some sites say 8AWG, other tables 24AWG… Any recommendations for my setup?

led-strips
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Thanks a lot for your review :pray:

2

This will help you do the planning in a better way ,and yes get a PSU(s) that is more powerful then your need so you do not stress it or distribute the power to smaller PSUs LED power calculator (wled-calculator.github.io)

3

Thanks for the PSU confirmation and the link! :+1:
I already tried it and wanted to be sure I must indicate 50 LED in it (not 150, the whole setup).

Doing so give me 18 AWG as result, which is a 0.75mm diameter cable.
That should be okay to properly solder it on the strip connectors.

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4

One nice trick for soldering power connections directly to your strip:
You can use a short (8cm or less) piece of smaller wire soldered to the strip and then connect the larger wire to that short piece. The smaller piece will be easier to solder and will likely be more flexible giving you some strain relief on your wiring. A piece of stranded 22AWG wire will be much easier to reliably solder onto your strip and a 8cm length will add negligible voltage drop to the whole setup.

To see the added amount, you can use the alternate Voltage Drop calculator
Plug in your current of 2.05A, 5V DC, wire length of 0.08m and 22AWG wire and you’ll see that short piece adds less than 0.02V of drop. Very acceptable to make your wiring job easier and more stable.