Powering LED Strips

>>1207866
Also let me know if you need more information, I really appreciate any help at all.

What brand / model of strip are you using?

You first need to figure out how much light you need. Accent lighting or you want to actually be able to see something? Depending on that you pick the type of led strip and the density of chips, which dictates your total wattage.

Beyond that, read up on basic electronics, understand U=R*I and P=U*I. Then once you know you want, for example, a 10W LED strip, you can calculate how many amper-hours you need from your battery (10Ah at 12V).

>>1207866

How many lights? It's a simple power calculation after that.

# of lights * max Amps out * hours

That will help you determine what battery is appropriate.

Without knowing how many lights, your budget, the voltage, or if you've even got anything yet, I'd recomend you go for a 5v LED strip. You could then use a standard USB battery brick (the kind for charging cell phones) as the battery. The number of lights on the strip will by limited by the max amp output of your usb battery. You'll have to figure out how much each LED uses, and multiply it by the number of LEDs and cut the LED strip to be under max amps output for the battery.

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>>1207882
See picture

>>1207928
Good point it needs to be able to be seen while out on a lake. Think of it to replace the lights that you have on a boat at night.

>>1208295
were looking at as a whole roughly 120 LED lights and the power adapter says Output - 12V 2A...
># of lights * max Amps out * hours
so does that mean 120*2*12 = 2,880 <What is that number?

>>1208331
120 Lights, budget doesn't matter but size and convenience does, 12V, see image. How does that 5V stack up to a 12V LED?

In theory you might be able to find 12V LEDs that are 4x3.1V, and run them off of three lithium ions, 11.1=3.7*3. If you're willing to overvolt, and I suggest you look into PWM either way, you can use a PWM to nearly 100% efficiently extend the lifetime of your battery. a 555 and a mosfet would run like 1mW, yet could chop your consumption down to 10% and still leave you with 500-1000Hz flicker rate easily.

Even better, you can go with a logic-level/"trench" mosfet and drive the mosfet directly with the 555 yet still providing amps through the LEDs.

I could provide a circuit, it was a botched PWM (I was looking at both the PWM and voltage-controlled oscillator). It only uses like four resistors and a capacitor with a 555, and can do 0-100% PWM relating to a 0-VCC control signal. One drawback is the frequency shifts, but even the lowest frequency was hundreds, if not 1000+Hz (and it was near max brightness), and the PWM was non-linear (off by like 10-20% flat iirc).

Normal PWMs with a 555 take like two zener diodes or some bullshit.

>>1208395
You follow all that now OP?
He'll be asking questions later.

>>1208380
>it needs to be able to be seen while out on a lake
You might want to order a sample string, run it off of a 12V adapter, and then decide how many of these strips you'll need, or whether you should go with something brighter and more focused, therefore more visible at a distance..
Anyway, the metric you'd be looking for is amps per meter. From a rather different 12V string grabbed from my stuff box, I measured about 0.67A for 100 parallel sections of 3, so 6.7mA per section, or 120mA/m. *Your mileage will probably vary.*
Planned run hours should probably only be 12 if you're in the tropics. Increase according to expected worst-case night time, and add an hour or two for dawn and dusk.
Multiply the mA/m by meters of string * run hours to get your best-case mAh for the whole string.
Then triple in case you miss the sun one day to get your battery capacity.
For the charger, assume 6 hours of charging from a solar cell and controller setup on average, so multiply battery Ah by 12 and divide by 6 to get watts. Divide by more like 4 in upper latitudes.

So! Let's say my one 5m string goes all the way around this cute little boat and you're in Southern California so you can plan on 15 hours of night time at most plus half an hour each twilight. That's 0.12 * 5 * 16 * 3 = 28.8Ah. Kind of a big battery. You'll want a 57.6W or more solar charger and controller for that unless you can do without the one day reserve.
Panel and controller: http://www.ebay.com/itm/60-Watt-60W-PV-Solar-Panel-Kit-12V-w-LCD-Controller-RV-Boat-Off-Grid-Gate/282085432973
and a deep cycle battery like this one:
https://www.apexbattery.com/upg-group-u1-agm-trolling-battery.html

>>1208395
I don't know if I would suggest not buyfagging the PWM controller. They're like $4 assembled.

>>1208380

No, each LED will output something like .06 A

So .06A * 120 LEDs will give you 7.2A max output.

If you plan on running that for 12 hours then it's 7.2A * 12H = 86.4 Amp Hours. Basically you're not going to be able to do it unless you have a car battery.

Your lights state 12V 24W. Power = A*V

So 24W = A*12V ----> A = 2

So for one hour it would be 2 amp. That's really not bad.

2A *12h = 24 amp hour battery needed.

>>1208423
HI, First time here. "buyfag". That is new

>>1208834
Hi newfriend. We're all fags on this bus. The buyfags are the ones who tell you to just buy everything regardless of simplicity or skill level. This noun also verbs.

>>1208832
>60mA for a plain old single LED without heatsink arrangements
Not bloody likely.
>output
Only slightly more likely and entirely negligible.
>12V 24W
That's the power supply's rating, not the string's.
>car battery
Actually terrible for deep cycle applications. Car batteries are meant to be float charged and don't take deep discharging well. Anon'll need batteries designated for deep cycling. See worked example in >>1208423

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>>1208931

>60mA for an LED

I was using RGBs WS2812bs at full power as an example. They are 60mA at 100% power on each LED on the die.

>>1208931
>>60mA for a plain old single LED without heatsink arrangements
Adafruit's neopixel RGB leds USE 60mA at max output. With with all 3 LEDS turned on at once. But with primary colors (1 color at a time) it only uses 20mA. Not sure exactly what OP is using as neopixles are 5v.

However, their guide has good tips.
https://learn.adafruit.com/sipping-power-with-neopixels/insights
It mentions some of what >>1208395 mentions and other ideas. Using all the methods mentioned in the guide they reduced power from 340mA down to only 17mA.

>>1208936
>RGBs WS2812bs
https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/WS2812B.pdf
Those would be 5v. You can undervolt them quite a bit to save power. Down to 3.5v. So long as your data line is nearly the same voltage.
It looks like you'll need a micro controller, like Arduino, to drive them. Some arduinos run 3.3V. Maybe you could use a battery pack between 3.5-4.0v and it'd be close enough for lights and arduino to operate.

>>1208959

I'm not OP, I know how to run them. Is 3.3 too low to run the arduino though? I thought it needed a minimum 5V in.

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>>1208960
some of the new smaller arduinos are made for 3.3.

But since you asked tho, I literally just found you can undervolt the Atmega328 chip and run at a lower clockspeed.
http://www.gammon.com.au/forum/?id=11497
I'll be reading this tonight. :D

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>>1208936
Ah, that's more believable. Simple LEDs tend to have absolute maximum continuous forward current ratings of 30mA or so, and recommended maximum forward current of 20mA. I just checked my earlier work >>1208423 and I had significantly undervolted my string and I have no better supply to test with. 20mA per three LEDs and 400mA/m may be correct for a 60 LED/m 12V strip. Pic related is me.

>>1208380
OP appears to be using
https://www.amazon.com/WenTop-Waterproof-Flexible-Lighting-Bathroom/dp/B01GJ3O0J8
which are 12V strips made up of segments of 3 dumb LEDs in series with a ballast resistor. Have 12V, will glow.

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>>1207866
Hey all I'm screen shooting and reading so thank you.

I have to do some research for some of your responses...

Overall... I need this thing to be as lean and mean as possible I have thought about running the entire thing off of the boat battery which there will be two of but I didn't want to rely on it...

If it helps picture this on a boat like a Nautique G23 or Mastercraft X Star.

It sounds like that may be the best option based on some of your replies.

I hope all you fucks are doing something with your lives because you all seem smart as hell and if your not use me as a reference.

Sincerely, thank you in advance. If the thread stays alive long enough I will update you with a decision, picture or more questions.

>>1209023
>I need this thing to be as lean and mean as possible

Some advice. If you're new to this don't try to make a super lean version right away. The 1st time, getting something to work is more important than how much power it uses. Once it's working you can go back and look at ways to make it lighter, slimmer, prettier, and more efficient.

>>1209210
good point, noted.
It's hard to just accept, really want this to look good and work