Please help with LED Puck light run around eave of house and garage

M

Mihzyd777

New member
Hello All,

I'm going to go crazy as I keep getting info from others on how to run or NOT run led puck lights under my eaves. My run with LED pucks around my garages is approx. 200 ft. total. I have attached pics of my house with approx. measurements in ft. for each section. I didn't show the garage which is about 32 ft. for the large one and on the right the garage is approx. 25 ft.
I've been told I can run everything off 1 QUINLED controller with a 1200 watt power supply and just power inject every 100 LED puck lights or so. I have also been told that won't work (But this is how my neighbor had his installed by a company) and they said I should you 3 - Meanwell 350w power supplies one in each location where I have outdoor power outlets for Christmas lights (2 outlets on left , and middle of 2nd floor eaves, and 1 outlet on far right first floor eave.
I've been told to run EVERYTHING off 1 controller, and others tell me to run 2 controllers, 1 on my main eaves and 1 just for the 2 car garage as I really don't have a way to get an extension cable up from garage to 2nd floor lights. Unless someone has another idea?
Looking at my house pics can SOMEONE give me info that makes sense and tell me which direction to start my run and end it and how I should connect it all together? I would truly appreciate it!

P.S. - I marked the power outlet location with yellow circle. Total of 3 of them.
Thank you!
 

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You need to realize a few things:

A 25ms refresh rate (about as fast as we go) drives up to 680 pixels. This means the number of controllers is driven by the number of pixels you have. FYI 50ms refresh rate is ~1300 pixels (no magic here, just math).

The same for PSU. You did not mention how much power a puck uses. number of Pixels = (PSU Power * 0.8) / Power used by the pixel at full white. That drives the minimum number of PSUs. After that, you look at the wire needed to inject power. We typically inject every 50 pixels at 5v and 100 pixels at 12v. But that is for pixels that draw 0.06A. How much will your pucks draw at full white? If they draw 3 times that power level then you need to inject three times as often.

It is ok to have more PSUs and controllers. It is NOT ok to have fewer PSUs and controllers than warranted by the calculations above.
 
Thanks for the quick replay Martin. I did forget to add that info I apologize. The 12v puck LED use 0.96w on full bright white, the 24v use 1.2w on full bright white per puck. The 12v uses 18awg wire while the 24v uses 16awg wire and are both UL listed. I'm using Meanwell 350 watt powersupply. So I'm looking at going 12v or 24v I haven't decided. I was originally going to go with the 12v but the only reason I'm considering 24v is because it is more efficient but I do understand it would need more power injection at shorter distances correct?
If I stay with the 12v and using my attached home roofline pics above, and knowing where my power is, how many power supplies and injection points would you say I would need. Interesting thing is my neighbor just got permanent puck lights by an company and they used a single 1200watt HP power supply , with a QUIN ESP-32 AE+ board that feeds the entire 110v of lights he is using. The power supply is centralized on his second floor but that's all that runs his 12v LED puck lights that also use 0.96 watts and a single controller, so I became more confused when I saw that.

I kind of figured out already that 1 of my 350 watt power supplies can run power inject to 3 different spots at 100 LED anymore than than and I would be at 384 watts in leds. So I'm ok with adding a 2nd power supply in a box under my eaves, but how about the controller, will it be able to send single through 163 ft. of eave line leds using a booster every 100 or so leds? My only confusion is when I run a "T" for power inject the power only flows to 1 side correct meaning it won't send power downstream and upstream only upstream correct? Also, is there a limit on how far I can run a 18awg power injection cable?
 

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Common misconception here. The controller sends data to the "first" pixel only. Each pixel regenerates the data signal.

Silly example: Max practical distance between pixels without signal amplification over cheap wire is ~20' x 100 pixels means you can have a string that is 2000' long (from a signal point of view). However, voltage drop on the wire is going to kill you.

Voltage drop for wire is calculated based on wire gauge and distance from PSU to the pixels. So you want to keep the wire as short and thick as possible to reduce voltage loss. You can also reduce voltage loss by using a higher voltage. Higher voltage reduces the current through the wire and therefore reduces the voltage loss on the wire. For your 12v pucks you would inject every 100 pixels (I would do 50 but I over engineer things). Please make sure you are using 16awg wire (14 would be better) if you are more than 25' from the PSU to the injection point.
 
So my 12v lights I'm looking at have 18awg wire instead of the normal 20awg. The 24v lights have 16 awg wire instead of 18awg. So if I go the 24v can I go further before I inject or do I have to inject at shorter distance? Meaning 12v inject every 100 pixels, with 24v does inject happen ever 150-200 pixels or less than the 12v?
Also, what your saying above is 1 controller can handle my entire eave of my home then right since the eave run is approx. 160 ft. Can you help with where I should start and which direction to run everything?

Thank you so much!
 
Do you have fewer than 680 pixels? Then everything fits on a single controller port.

24v would (should?) allow injection at 200 pixels. I would do injection at 100 pixels (but that is just me).

My eves run at 24v for injection, go through a buck converter down to 5v and loss over 50' is about 1v. Wire runs 10 degrees cooler than when PI was at 12v ("slightly warm to touch" as opposed to "hot to touch").

As for one PSU vs More, I prefer multiple PSUs and avoid the central huge PSU concept. This is a personal choice. Single PSU with thick wires going a longer distance vs multiple PSUs with shorter wires is a style choice. Both options work.

If you are getting the feeling that I am avoiding telling you exactly what to do, then you are right. There are a lot of options here and you will need to decide which options work best for you.
 
MartinMueller2003 said:
Do you have fewer than 680 pixels? Then everything fits on a single controller port.

24v would (should?) allow injection at 200 pixels. I would do injection at 100 pixels (but that is just me).

My eves run at 24v for injection, go through a buck converter down to 5v and loss over 50' is about 1v. Wire runs 10 degrees cooler than when PI was at 12v ("slightly warm to touch" as opposed to "hot to touch").

As for one PSU vs More, I prefer multiple PSUs and avoid the central huge PSU concept. This is a personal choice. Single PSU with thick wires going a longer distance vs multiple PSUs with shorter wires is a style choice. Both options work.

If you are getting the feeling that I am avoiding telling you exactly what to do, then you are right. There are a lot of options here and you will need to decide which options work best for you.
Click to expand...

Ya I get that feeling LOL. So let me ask bluntly IF this was your home, where would you put your Controller and where would you put power supplies?
 
ok. My opinion (and not the only solution).

A PSU at the upper center location. A two port controller at that location with one port driving left and the other driving to the right.

A PSU in the garage along with a controller to drive the garage outline and the eves directly above the garage door. I might even give this a two port controller so that you do not have a long wire from the end of the garage run to the start of the eve run.

A PSU at the far side of the lower right eve to drive the right hand portion of the house along with a controller at the same location.

As you can see, I like to be able to partition the display so that if any component fails, a good portion of the rest continues to run. A contractor is going to opt for the least work for the most money. Hence the use of a single PSU and a Single controller. The drawback is the added signal wires that need to get from one end of an eve to the other and then work its way back. Look at your house and try to envision how you would put up a single line of twine that is unbroken to all of the areas you show in your picture. Once the headache clears, look at the problem as a series of zones. Keep in mind that most controllers and sequencers allow you to reverse all of the lights on a string segment so that strings can be driven from a center point and still work fine.
 
YES!! This is what I was thinking LOL. So let me throw a small wrench in this. I already have a Kulp K8 board I'd like to use. So what can I put in the other 2 locations? Should I do just a SR or another K8 and can you give me links to the product you recommend please?
 
K8, K4, Remote receivers all valid solutions. You just want to keep the data runs from the controller to the first pixels as short as possible.

FYI: I power almost no strings from my controllers. I us V- and Data from the controller to the first pixel. This ensures I do not get an ground drift from voltage drop on wires from controller to pixels.

I also use the ESPixelStick V3 Hardware running V4 software. I have a bunch of these as well: https://quinled.info/pre-assembled-quinled-dig-quad/
 
MartinMueller2003 said:
K8, K4, Remote receivers all valid solutions. You just want to keep the data runs from the controller to the first pixels as short as possible.

FYI: I power almost no strings from my controllers. I us V- and Data from the controller to the first pixel. This ensures I do not get an ground drift from voltage drop on wires from controller to pixels.

I also use the ESPixelStick V3 Hardware running V4 software. I have a bunch of these as well: https://quinled.info/pre-assembled-quinled-dig-quad/
Click to expand...

So question for you. I received 5050 PUCK LED Lights from 2 different vendors with 2 different controller boxes. Both lights are the same wattage of 0.96w and same connectors. HOWEVER, when I put 1 vendors light on the other vendors controller they do not work and vice versa. Have you ever seen this? Any idea what causes this? I'd hate to get the LED pucks and they don't work with my K8. Thanks!
 
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