rgb dumb strip injection

[bob81354]

Hi to all Marry Christmas

l have a 30ch dumb controller and some rgb strips 60 per mm that I am using for my eaves on the house. How do most of you hook them up do you go back to the controller after each strip or do you power inject after each strip ? I would like to have the top of the house all one Ch. and the bottom all one Ch. top of the house is 22 Ft. bottom is 40 Ft


How do you power injection theses black is 12 volt rgb ground but which one ?

Thanks Bob

 

[scamper]

The longest run of dumb strips I did was the 12v ones and I made "north poles" I had 3 strips at approx. 2m each (so 6m) and then 3 rgb modules in the top.
I have each one controlled by 4 x 3 channel controllers and then series out to the next.
I have 4 of these all up.
Last year I ran them as is and the colours got progressively worse down the line. (last year was my first year doing this, so I didn't know much about well... anything)
This year, I have power injected into the last one in line and it all works perfectly.
Basically, there are many theories and rule of thumb, but when it comes down to it, hook it all up, turn on white and see how the colour looks. If it is acceptable, then leave it, if it is not white, then you will need to power inject. try the end, if it is still not right, you may need to inject somewhere in the middle also.

 

[i13]

Power injection is not very practical with dumb RGB because the power all flows through the controller itself. You can't run dumb RGB with just one channel either. Did you mean channel when you said Ch? The red, green and blue are one channel each. Please post a link to the strips because it sounds as though the output and channel terms might be confused. Combining that with a power injection questions suggests to me that you might have pixel strips instead of dumb strips.

You could connect the strips end-to-end as scamper said but 60 LEDs per metre will display wrong colours sooner than 30 LEDs per metre. Just be careful about the current draw as it might be too much for your controller.

 

[AAH]

You can power inject dumb rgb if you have to. The simplest form is to supply a heavy +ve wire to a point further along the rgb run to compensate for voltage drop. This could potentially be at the far end of the strip/nodes. An alternative is to supply all 4 connections (+ve and R,G and B) to that same point. The potential problem with this scenario is that if you have enough current flowing for the voltage drop to be significant then you may be exceeding the current per channel or current per 3 channels of the controller that you are hooked up to.
60 led/metre (not mm) strip works out around 6A for a 5m strip according to http://www.da-share.com/calculators/led-strip-string-current/ . If you look at http://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/Controllers#Feature_Comparisons there's a lot that won't handle more than that 2A/channel.

For RGB lights it is normal for them to have a common positive and this is often black and not a ground/0V wire.

 

[fasteddy]

All you need to use is a power amplifier like this one that Ray sells as this will allow you to run all from one channel from the controller

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/10A-3channel-led-RGB-amplifier-DC12-24V-input/701799_836405727.html

this model is for 12 to 24v dumb lighting

 

[bandyman]

All you need to use is a power amplifier like this one that Ray sells as this will allow you to run all from one channel from the controller

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/10A-3channel-led-RGB-amplifier-DC12-24V-input/701799_836405727.html

this model is for 12 to 24v dumb lighting

Eddie... I'm outlining my roof in smart 12v rgb strips. I'm going to use a falcon controller. Do they make an amp like the one above for smart strips and if so does that mean I won't have to inject power? Thanks

 

[fasteddy]

All you need to use is a power amplifier like this one that Ray sells as this will allow you to run all from one channel from the controller

http://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/10A-3channel-led-RGB-amplifier-DC12-24V-input/701799_836405727.html

this model is for 12 to 24v dumb lighting

Eddie... I'm outlining my roof in smart 12v rgb strips. I'm going to use a falcon controller. Do they make an amp like the one above for smart strips and if so does that mean I won't have to inject power? Thanks

Unfortunately you cant change Ohms law as power injection is needed for both dumb and smart lighting with long runs due to voltage drop which is unavoidable with low voltage lighting

Only dumb lighting requires an amplifier, this is basically power injection but because the dumb lighting is driven and controlled at board then power injection can be difficult with different power supplies because you need to have the Red, Green and Blue lines connected to pass on the power for the lights. So the amplifier basically isolates the power supplies from each other to allow for power injection.

With smart pixels then this is not needed because each light is basically its own controller with its own LED driver that uses data to control, so to inject power then you only need to connect the ground and data between the 2 and separate the 2 power supplies by separating the +V