Power directly from power supply

Any reason not use use power directly from the power supply's and only use the controllers for the data? (two wires from the power supply and one from the controller). Power the controller from a wall wart.

You have to tie the grounds together but otherwise that is how I run all of mine.

You will find most people only use the controller for the data signal.
I run all my light directly from power supplies, with fuses between lights and power supplies obviously.

As mentioned, make sure you run a ground wire (and only the ground wire) from each supply to the controller ground. If you don't you will get lots of random flashing on your pixels.

This allows you to utilise the full amount of pixels a particular controller can output, rather than being limited by its power output.

Does the RJ45 from the controller (F16v2 in my case) provide a ground you can tap into for each powersupply? As this won't/shouldn't be a current loading ground.

pmflav said:

Does the RJ45 from the controller (F16v2 in my case) provide a ground you can tap into for each powersupply? As this won't/shouldn't be a current loading ground.

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Just have a common connection between the negative output of each power supply and the negative output from the controller. This can be done through the string of pixels.

You don't want to have the positive outputs connected together.

it will, but the easiest way is to use the ground terminal that powers the controller and join that to the rest of your PSU grounds.