This noob needs help with voltages

[TMcgregor]

Hi there,

I am just starting to dive down the rabbit hole of Xmas lighting. I've done Xmas lights for a few years now but just with off the shelf lights from the likes of Kmart and Bunnings. I now have over 30 plugs with daisy chained power boards scattered around the lawn.

Needless to say it's getting a bit dangerous and I need to find a better way as there will always be more added year after year.
I've had a look at the voltages on the existing power supplies to work out what I need but they are in all sorts of different voltages.
I've made a spreadsheet showing all my current power supplies.

The 101 guide talks about how leds are either 5v or 12v but mine are like 25, 33 and 40v. The power supplies also have a V-rated and a V-out.

While I'm at it I figure it's a good time to plan for lighting controls so I want to make sure the power supplies can work with that in the future.

I also didn't read anything about WLED in the manual. Is it just too new to be in the manual or is it taboo here? It seems like WLED is a good way to add off the shelf programmable lights like Mirabella Genio to xLights or FPP.

Any advice before I waste money buying the wrong stuff?

TLR
I want to power my lights from much fewer power supplies for safety and to allow for programming light shows in the near future.

 

[AAH]

The "leds" in the ACL101 are primarily pixels. Pixels now also come in 24V and potentially other voltages as well. Most of the 101 was written by ryanschristmaslights and myself. Neither 1 of us has any experience with wled or espixelstick so we didn't detail them at all. The ESP32 based controllers do offer a low cost way to get into computer control and there is limited support for ESP32 controllers in xlights. ESP32 is on my to learn/to do list of things for me to do.
The lights that you look to have are what I refer to commonly as the evil 2 wire, 2 channel lights. These have 2 wires from the multifunction controller out to the lights and every 2nd light does the same thing. In order to control these lights the polarity gets toggled and the on/off time for each polarity gets varied. I make a couple of controllers for these style lights that allow computer control or can also be used to control the whole lot at the same time with the same function.
https://www.hansonelectronics.com.au/product/dmx2-24/ is the most commonly used board with the 2811DC2-30 being an option that allows for more channels at a lower cost per channel but only works in a WS281x pixel network.
The DMX2-24 will work from about 12V to 40V and mixing voltages that are close together generally won't cause an issue. Running 31V, 32V and 36V strings from 31-32V should give very little noticeable difference in brightness between the existing controller and voltage and a power supply at 31-32V. 4.5V and 5V are outside of the voltage range of what the DMX2-24 and 2811DC2-30 can control. The output IC has an 8V low voltage lockout so it can't do the lower voltage strings. I also do the DMX2-24 in a ready to run version which has a 31V 200W power supply in it with a wide adjustment range. Instead of the typical +/- 10% of the nominal range these are adjustable from about 24V to 39V. As of a few weeks ago I've also been putting a voltmeter in the boxes so that the adjusted voltage can be seen.