24V seed pixels

Kent

Kent

Apprentice elf
Joined
Nov 21, 2020
Messages
88
Just some information for anyone interested...

I'm looking at adding quite a few seed pixels as part of a matrix this year and have been investigating the 24V options.

They are individually addressable, but need to be cut every six pixels due to the power supply wiring. They have four wires, however the fourth wire is for the power circuit, rather than a backup data line.

With a string of 300 at 10cm spacing, they were drawing 568mA @ 24V at the source, and the voltage measured at the end of the string was ~21.7V.
Initially I had 940 connected up, and the load of the additional pixels was causing them to stop working a few pixels past ~250, hence the cut at 300. You could probably squeeze a few more out if needed.

The other thing to note about these is that they draw the exact same current regardless of colour or brightness - there is no change between them being off or on full white.

For my application I'm looking for these with 2cm spacing, however I'm not aware of any supplier that can do that right now. Two suppliers I've spoken with claim they will be able to make them with some new machines they hope to have up and running in the next month.

A couple of rough videos showing them in action:

 
Further to the above, I can correlate the same current measurements on a shorter string (60 px) that @Kent gave me to test. I measured 112mA on 60 pixels, which equates to 11.2mA per pixel.

The arrangement is a series/parallel arrangement - 6 pixels in series. This gives 4V per pixel. Note this is different to the way strip works where it's one driver chip for 3/6 LEDs, these are individually controllable.
This wiring is why they always consume their 11mA per pixel / series of 6. It means each of the 6 always have the same even 4V available to them, regardless of the brightness and colour of the pixel.

They are also a 4 wire design where the 4th wire is for interlinking the pixels in the series arrangement. It also means that you can only cut every 6 pixels.

Durability they "feel" better than other 3 wire seeds I have looked at.
Their brightness is quite alright. a quick visual looks like running a 5V bullet at 60% is the same as one as these seeds at 100%.
The ones tested are GRB colour arrangement.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top