LED lighting project wiring Questions

zhadao

New Member
Hello,guys! So cold in my city, but I have to solve question, er...It seems like that there are no connections between with this two situation. let me begin by thanking anyone and everyone for any help.

I have a serious lighting project and am likely getting very ambitious.

I am trying to wire up a series of WS2812 LED strips. Each 2 strips of 24 LEDs will be contained in a box, so 48 RGB LEDs per box (think 2 rows per box). I will ultimately have ~48 boxes, so over 2300 LEDs. I want to wire these as simply as possible. There is a Power, Ground, and Data. Data is directional. I figure to avoid voltage drops I have to bring power in every third box or so. I am told each LED pulls 20 mAmps and there are 3 LEDs per WS2812 (R,G,& B). So in reality each of the 48 LEDs is really 3x, which equals 144 per box. Thus 60mAmps per RGB LED or 2880 mAmps per box, if my math is correct. Oh, and these are the 5V variety of LEDs.

Here are my questions:

  1. What gauge wire could I use? Would quality Phone line or Cat 5/6 work if I get a 22 gauge version?

  2. Could I use those connectors? Phone/Cat5/6 or are we talking too much power?

  3. Could I daisy chain the data or would this cause problems? Do I need to run data out to a junction box?

  4. Is there any easy way to connect or bring things back to power the the brain running all these lights? Was thinking of a Teensy 3.1 to control everything.
Any advise would be appreciated. This will be for public displays and I want to keep EVERYONE, me included, safe around these lights.

update:

Was planning on implementing in stages. Have 30 m of the LED strips at the moment and that will let me make ~25 of the boxes. Yes I know that is still a lot, but can wire up a couple of them at a time and test everything. This is why I am wanting to dot the i and cross the t.

If I read the amperage table correctly 22 gauge wire would support 7 amps. So I still have almost double the capacity. Thanks for the catch on the controller.

Any idea on those connectors?

update:

At the moment I have a 60Amp power supply. Could get more of these or something larger. Haven't figured that out yet.
Thank you so much!
 

2quills

Well-Known Member
Did you say 48 boxes total?

You probably don't have enough capacity in your service panel to power that much light if each box is pulling 2.8 amps worth of current at it's maximum.

Are the RGB emitters on each chip going to be on at the same time or do they only run 1 color at a time? That makes a huge difference on what your requirements will be.
 
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