First order with Ray Wu, any advice?

[David_AVD]

Personally I would power a 5m pixel strip from both ends.

 

[AussieDoug]

Not sure if I over looked it but I only saw 1 of each 5v & 12v PSU's.

With that many lights it will need to be spread across multiple PSU's. To give yourself an idea of loads David-AVD has this great tool on his site.

http://www.da-share.com/calculators/led-strip-string-current/

 

[DavidJ247]

Not sure if I over looked it but I only saw 1 of each 5v & 12v PSU's.

With that many lights it will need to be spread across multiple PSU's. To give yourself an idea of loads David-AVD has this great tool on his site.

http://www.da-share.com/calculators/led-strip-string-current/

Thanks for the link to this calculator AussieDoug, this will be useful. I haven't put in final numbers for the power supplies yet, I was debating between the generic units or the cheap Meanwell(or maybe not) ones. I'm back on the RayWu generic bandwagon atm, folks seem to have had good results with these, they are significantly cheaper and I plan to have a few spares anyway should any fail.
In this first order I will have 3x 350W power supplies, 2x 12V and 1x 5V, only buying bare minimum at first to keep the cost down, but I intend to add more supplies and spares to my next orders. If my calculations are correct and I was to use all 75m of this 12V strip (on full white) it would draw around 550W, across 2 PSUs that would be around 80% capacity. Ok or would you suggest I add another?

 

[i13]

Personally I would power a 5m pixel strip from both ends.

Interesting; personally I wouldn't (and currently don't) for a 5 metre 12V strip with 30 RGB LEDs per metre. Hopefully there isn't something wrong with this that I need to know about. That's the good thing about getting help from an online community - you get multiple opinions that are all worth considering

You can do bench testing to see whether the setup works properly with your power injection cables. Note that for data cables there may be more interference in a setting with large numbers of other lights nearby.

 

[David_AVD]

I found that powering 30 l/m 12V 2811 strip from one end resulted in loss of brightness at the non-powered end.

 

[djgra79]

I found that powering 30 l/m 12V 2811 strip from one end resulted in loss of brightness at the non-powered end.

I found similar, hence why I usually get 4-6m per PI point as my lengths are 2-2.5m each. But different results for different people, based on cables used etc.

 

[damona]

Expect the Strips to have fixes. I order a fair bit, their was a repair every 1.2 meters on average. You end up with what most people call factory seconds (test failed, then fixed). However if the nodes are tested and some fail, it easy for Ray team to un-solder the node and replace it.


Buy you power supplies in Australia, not overseas not worth the risk to your life.

 

[DavidJ247]

First order placed! Looking forward to it arriving so I can start building.


Thanks to all that responded for the great advice, I was able to make some informed decisions and I'm confident that I'll have the right gear to make a good start. Much appreciated.