Hello and validation of my thought process

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GCAllan

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Jan 12, 2015
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Hello All

Firstly thankyou all very much for this wonderful forum housed with years of experience. It has consumed many hours of my time reading and learning and going "HUH" how does that work!!

Anyway, always been a keen enthusiast of XMAS lights but this year decided to make them computerised. I've spent most of my working life in the IT networking space. The fact that i'm going to put some of the Cisco kit I've hoarded over the years around my front yard to make lights flash amuses me somewhat. Don't think that's what Cisco intended.

So after the research I have done on this forum, I decided to buy a Pixlite 16 and use Vixen 3, with a myriad of pixel nodes and strips from Ray WU, all 2811. I've had a play and things flash and blink and much to my "minister of war and finance's" displeasure, I don't WANT, I NEED more.

So to the nitty gritty, I have made myself a spreadsheet and wiring diagram of the pixels I want to hang off the Pixlite and power wise I think it's overloaded. So before I make things potentially SMOKE I thought I would get validation from you guys i'm on the right track. The total Amps is over the recommended 32A per bank and 3 of the Pixlite outputs end up more than the recommended 7.5A.

I believe this would only occur if all lights are on at once at maximum intensity on white?

After reading the bible and power injections forums, I believe I can overcome these issues by using 4 x 350W power supplies and using 2, 1 on each bank powering a subset of the lights and 2 more to power the other subset of lights independent of the Pixlite. All GND's are connected by a GND Bus Bar.

I am also unsure that the GND connection to the second subset of lights should be off the GND Bus Bar or off the Pixlite GND connections or does it not matter!!!

Anyway hoping someone will guide me in the right direction and certainly looking forward to the rest of the year building up my display and hoping it all works on go-live.

Thanks again for the wealth of information available on this forum.

Thanks

Al
 

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Hi GCAllan and welcome to ACL

You are correct that the lights will not draw as much current unless they are on full white. Having said that, dimmed white might be full white pulsing very quickly so it appears dim (getting a bit beyond my knowledge). Also be aware that it is always best to measure the current draw yourself if you haven't already.

You can power some of the pixels through the PixLite 16 but you don't have to. I don't own a PixLite and I am having a bit of difficulty determining what is what in your diagram but can hopefully still answer your questions.

I would connect the negative outputs from the PixLite 16 directly to the pixel sets and not use a bus bar. You don't have to connect the PixLite's positive outputs to the pixels if you decide not to power any through it. You only need to ensure that the negatives are common along each run of pixels, not between multiple runs.
When you inject power, simply connect the positive and negative from the power supply to the positive and negative lines in the run of pixels where injection is required. Cut the positive line half way between each different power supply but leave the negative one connected between them. This ensures it is common along the entire length of the string of pixels without requiring the bus bar.
 
Thanks i13 for the response and the welcome


So i took the leap of faith an decided to build my very first element over the weekend. Drilled 500 holes to make a 25x20 pixel matrix, inserting 5 x 100 strings of Rays,2811 pixel nodes. Fingers don't work very good now.


Connected as you suggested with negative directly to pixels and separating the positive onto their own connection to a separate power supply.


Hey presto it all worked except i inserted the pixels from right to left and running text and images to the grid was all back to front. So i had to pull them out and rewire from left to right, won't make that mistake again.


So it all came together last night, stuck it out in the front yard sequenced a few things and it worked a treat causing me to run around the yard like a kid with a new toy.


Thanks again for your help


Al
 
Welcome.gif

to ACL Al
I will leave it to the experts to assist you. :)
 
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