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AusChristmasLighting 101 Manual
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101 display basics
Basic setup diagram, with power injection example
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[QUOTE="i13, post: 119008, member: 21708"] Drive level: The maximum brightness setting that you've chosen for your pixels. You may decide that 100% brightness is too bright. You mentioned a drive level of 40%. Recommended AWG between the power source and each string: It depends on the distance and current draw but it would often be too thin if you match it to the wire AWG between the pixels. You'll want it to be thick enough to safely power the pixels at 100% brightness and also thick enough that there's a tolerable amount of voltage drop within it. Using an example of 100 pixels placed two metres from the power supply: Reference table: [URL]https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/wire-gauges-d_419.html[/URL] At 100% brightness, each pixel may draw 0.0555 amps. This is a worst-case-scenario number but it is better to be safe than sorry. As you're powering 100 pixels, that is 5.55 amps. 16 AWG wire would be safe to use unless it has 43 or more cores. Now we need to check how much voltage drop will occur. The total length of wire is four metres because the current needs to travel both directions in order to complete the circuit. Multiplying the resistance by the current gives you the voltage drop as per Ohm's law. The resistance is four metres multiplied by 0.013 ohms per metre = 0.052 Ohms. Multiplying this by 5.55 amps gives you a loss of 0.2886 volts which is excellent. At 40% brightness, you'll only lose 40% of this voltage which is 0.11544 volts (even better). I have now determined that 16 AWG is sufficient unless it has more than 43 cores. This would also be fine at four metres away from the controller. you've doubled the distance and therefore doubled the voltage drop. This means that you'll have a loss of 0.23088 volts at 40% brightness which is still acceptable. I like to overengineer and run my pixels at 100% brightness. You could start the calculation with 40% of 0.0555 amps. This would allow you to use thinner cable but it's best to use a fuse that blows with less current than the cable's maximum and be prepared to blow the fuse when you misconfigure something and run the pixels too bright. Another technique is to double the power cables which halves the voltage drop. Be careful not to break one of them because this may overload the remaining one. Remember that your injection point is powering 200 pixels, not 100. There are plenty of options other than Falcon. Advatek controllers will do the job although I have no experience with them myself. Their main limitation is that they can only support one pixel signal type at a time. I expect this to be a non-issue because most pixels use the same WS2811 signal nowdays. [/QUOTE]
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Basic setup diagram, with power injection example
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