First controller setup and ready to roll!

It is quite common to have 1 AC cord feed multiple PSUs, just bounce the hot/neutral/ground along them.

In your case, you have 1200W of very efficient PSUs so they may draw a little over 10A, and 10A is OK on one good quality plug/outlet. (When I have 4 PSUs, 1400W output total, capable of sucking in 1700W and hitting the typical 15A rating, it depends on who assembled the unit whether there is 1 cord or two. Preassembled tended to have 1 cord, but the enclosures I got for the ones I built had 2 holes for cords so I added 2 cords. So I would say you are on the borderline here and can do as you'd prefer - one cord or two.)

Yes it is a good idea to hook all V- together coming out of the DC power supplies so you have a common V-. In some cases, they are connected together on the output board anyway, or doesn't matter, or ... but why take the chance. If you bounced the AC along the PSUs, bounce the output negative along too.
 
slw2206 said:
Also I read something about connecting grounds so data is synced up?
Click to expand...
merryoncherry said:
Yes it is a good idea to hook all V- together coming out of the DC power supplies so you have a common V-.
Click to expand...

Just to expand on this - do NOT connect the DC Negative to the AC Ground/Earth. Keep the mains wiring completely separate from the DC wiring.
 
Out of an abundance of caution, I'm just going to run 2 cords. This F16 will have many thousand pixels running off this box so no need to tempt a wire into overheating.

Kind of wishing I went with the next size up for enclosures. After 2 PSUs, F16, Pi4, and pigtails there's not much room left for distribution blocks for PI.

It'll work out in the end, but the bottom half of the enclosure is getting very "busy" with all the wires. I may print a raised bracket to mount my disto blocks over the top half of the F16 as there's vertical space there that is accessible and unused.

Fun times... 😁
 
Sounds like an amazing box!

The solution I recommend for the "box full" problem is to get an additional box ;-).

Seriously, that enclosure is the right size for a 16-port build, don't be afraid to have more than one controller, keep the player outside the controller enclosure (since there only needs to be 1 network cable between the two and then you can move the two around as convenient), etc. So that means swap out the Pi4 for the power boards, put the Pi4 elsewhere so you can access it more easily. Unless you were aiming for a completely stand-alone show with just one box, this will be more future-proof, and makes great use of what you already have.
 
Back
Top