Powering LED strip

[mnk_193]

Hi there,

 

I am wanting to power 2 sets of LED strip, one about 30 metres and one about 25. It is to outline a running track which will be on a thrust stage. I haven't much worked with LED strip before so wondering what sort of power supply / driver I would need etc. It would be RGBW tape, I have been looking on ProLight but there are so many different sorts of everything I have no idea what to get!

 

Any help in the best set up of this would be appreciated.

 

 

 

[alistermorton]

Hi. First, don't try to power the strip as one run of that length, break it up into shorter lengths (say 5M) and run multiple reasonably heavy runs of cable, otherwise you'll find the brightness dropping off along the length.

 

Secondly, what do you want to control it with? If a DMX source then there are any number of high power DMX-LED drivers on eBay - if all you want is four channels then something like this with a high power 12V supply might suffice, but a bit more detail about what you're trying to achieve and how would help. It might be easier to run several DMX decoder drivers and smaller power supplies, for example.

[mnk_193]

Hi. First, don't try to power the strip as one run of that length, break it up into shorter lengths (say 5M) and run multiple reasonably heavy runs of cable, otherwise you'll find the brightness dropping off along the length.

 

Secondly, what do you want to control it with? If a DMX source then there are any number of high power DMX-LED drivers on eBay - if all you want is four channels then something like this with a high power 12V supply might suffice, but a bit more detail about what you're trying to achieve and how would help. It might be easier to run several DMX decoder drivers and smaller power supplies, for example.

 

Thanks for your reply, so basically it's for a production of Chariots of Fire and there is a thrust stage that will be about 11m deep, 4.5m wide which will form an Olympic running track. We want to use the tape the illuminate the edges of the track when it is used. It will be controlled via DMX.

 

I looked at some 24V 320W drivers, which I think worked out would power 19m of tape, which is still a lot so would I be best just getting a few of these?

 

 

 

[alistermorton]

You need to match the driver voltage to the tape voltage. 12V tape (unsurprisingly) won't be happy powered off a 24V supply, so spec your tape first, then from the tape specification you can work out the power consumption (the mA/m will be quoted somewhere on the tape spec) and from that you can work out how much power your supply needs. If you're using RGBW tape then you're going to need 4 times as much power as a single colour tape.

 

For example, this tape uses 14.4W/m at 12V (1.200mA/m) so your 22m of tape would need a supply of 317W - 320W is close to that and doesn't allow much headroom. You may be better powering each side of the thrust separately, with a controller on each side, and (as others on here have suggested elsewhere) running extra power cables to compensate for the loss along the tape, at least feeding it from each end. Watch out for exceeding the power handling of the driver, too. The cheap one I linked to is 8A per channel, which sounds a lot but add up the power requirements of the tape per channel to be sure. The tape I linked to doesn't make it clear if that's 14.4W/m in total all leds on, or per colour. Someone like timsabre on here has a lot of experience driving these sort of products (he has designed controllers for them) as has DrV.

 

 

Presumably you're not looking at pixel addressable tape?

[timsabre]

For long runs I would go with 24V tape rather than 12V tape, as you can run a longer length in one piece before it all starts to go dim at the end.

 

You can get away with a lower powered driver if you are prepared to only use one colour at once, or if using 2 colours keep them at 50% etc. Some more expensive drivers will do this for you automatically.

 

[alistermorton]

For long runs I would go with 24V tape rather than 12V tape, as you can run a longer length in one piece before it all starts to go dim at the end.

 

Dang - beat me to it ;-)

 

 

 

[gyro_gearloose]

You can get repeaters for LED tape. They attach to the end of one piece of LED tape, and you then attach the next piece of tape and another power supply to power the extra tape. They use opto isolators to switch transistors which drive the extra tape. Quite a simple and clever way of injecting extra power into long tape runs.

[mnk_193]

Thanks for your replies everyone, very helpful

 

So would this combination work..?

 

https://prolight.co.uk/product/visio-quad-rgbw60-flexible-quad-colour-strip-5m

 

https://prolight.co.uk/product/visio-meanwell-hlg-320h-24a-320w-24v-dc-power-supply-driver

 

I can't imagine it's going to be at full brightness or even need to change colour but I'd rather have that option for now

 

 

 

[alistermorton]

As far as I can see, that's just a power supply. So yes, it could power the tape, but how do you want to control the tape. Just switch it on or off, or control brightness and colour?

[mnk_193]

Yes control of colour and brightness is what I want, so one of these too? https://prolight.co.uk/product/flexoled-ftp4-rgbw-led-DMX-driver I didn't know if it was the same thing as the previous link said power supply / driver

[alistermorton]

That, in addition to the power supply, would allow you to control the tape from your lighting desk.