Voltage Drop Wire Gauge

Hardware
1

Thanks in advance for your help.

820 LEDs

5V 60 Amp power supply

Power injection using 22 AWG https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B0793MF5CQ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Injection points before light 0, after 169, after 376, after 516, and after 820. These were the “convenient” places to inject power with the layout of the house. Lights look really good up until #380 or so where white starts to look yellow.

  1. Could the gauge of my wire impact the effectiveness of injecting power into the last few strings?

  2. If so, rather than running new wire, your thoughts on simply buying another power supply and plugging it into the end (after #820)?

I’m really enjoying this site, these lights and the app!

Cheers!

2

Yes gauge of wire can impact injection. Adding a power supply in the end can also help.

3

What I normally do is run one very thick cable to the centre point of my lights and tap feeds off this to each injection point. I get very even light distribution doing it this way. The main cable run from the power supply must be the heaviest gauge of wire that you can practically use for this to work effectively.
This method however will not be suitable for ultra long runs where multiple PSU’s might be needed at various points along the run.

4

Thank you. I ended up putting a 2nd power supply on the opposite end and it worked great. Then YouTube told me that I should make sure to cut the live wire so that the two power supplies aren’t trying to power each other. All working great now. I think I’ll end up putting up a thicker wire, but maybe when its warmer outside.

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