Stair Lights: Flexible wiring: Diagram

Hello all,

I am new to LED strips. I am redoing my stairs - replacing carpet with wooden treads. I want to take this opportunity to upgrade with LED lighting, which is quite cool from the videos I’ve seen. Here is the overal lay of the land:

  • 13 steps
  • Would like to have RGBW strips across the steps
  • Would like to have motion sensors at the top and bottom of stairs.

Pretty standard stuff from what I have studied in the forums, youtube, etc. The question I have is what is the most flexible wiring that can be built into the stairs while I am deciding on the type of strips, voltages, etc? Should I run 3 wires to one end of each step or 5? Should I also plan for serial connection of data wires, i.e., data out from strip 1 to data in of strip 2 and so on?

I do not have direct access to the back of the staircase, so need to open up dry walls. I want to make sure I set it up right when I open up dry walls.

I am reasonably comfortable with the software / configutation. But I want to be done with this wiring first.

Thanks much for any guidance,
Tella

hi @TellaPuli Welcome
just use standar Stripes prefer 1meter 30Led
Wire like Zig zag up
if ju use this its prety cheep aropund 25USD
use a D1 Mini )) i prefer the D1 wemos UNO board as it is just plug and play to ws2812b

you can add a Distance sensor so you can get segments of your starway Colored

1meter WS2812b 30L/m is from 1.6 USD at ali

Thanks much for your response. I thought it would be better to run V+ & GND wires to each strip directly so that voltage drop can be minimized, while the data wire can be zig-zagged as you suggest.

If I decide on RGBW COB strip, then do I need to zig-zag multiple data wires, say 4 of them? Is WLED able to handle RGBW COB strips?

What is the limitation of WLED on number of LEDs per strip and/or total number of LEDs on 13 steps?

Thank you.

Depends on the strip, some are all digital and some are “hybrid”, digital for RGB/analog for white.

some here managed 20 stripes with a distance sensor and segmentation on the stripe to handle 20 stairs only 3 → 90 led ON at the time
so then with the D1Uno ESP8266 Board and a simple USB Plug 1.5A with no extra cable

Wow, that sounds great! Can you pl send link(s), if any, to details of such designs? Many thanks in advance.