Power LED Lights + Injection. Complete Walkthrough

UvIn this video I will do a complete walkthrough of the 3 most common ways to power LED Strips as well as how to inject power into your longer led runs. I am definitely not an expert when it comes to powering led strips but the goal of this video is to hopefully show you that its not as hard or complex as you might think. In all my projects where I have powered things the way shown in the video, I generally have the maximum current on the WLED limiter set anywhere from 850 mA - 2000 mA which has always been bright enough to achieve the desired results. I also don't leave my led lights on overnight and will generally be in the room when they are turned on. Even though I have never had any issues, make sure to consult a trained professional if you are worried about safety.

Setup: 0:00 - 5:28
Testing: 5:29 - 10:34
Power Injection: 10:35 - 15:14
Other Projects I have done: 15:15 - 16:15

Link to some of my full DIY LED how-to project videos:

LED Tutorials:

Unboxing Videos:

The best way to help support my channel is to like, comment, make sure your subscribed and share my videos with as many people as you can. The other way is to use my links above as I get a small % at no extra cost to you if you buy something. Thank you all for the support!

[ChrisMaherDIY]

In this video I will do a complete walkthrough of the 3 most common ways to power LED Strips as well as how to inject power into your longer led runs. I am definitely not an expert when it comes to powering led strips but the goal of this video is to hopefully show you that its not as hard or complex as you might think. In all my projects where I have powered things the way shown in the video, I generally have the maximum current on the WLED limiter set anywhere from 850 mA - 2000 mA which has always been bright enough to achieve the desired results. I also don't leave my led lights on overnight and will generally be in the room when they are turned on. Even though I have never had any issues, make sure to consult a trained professional if you are worried about safety.


Setup: 0:00 - 5:28
Testing: 5:29 - 10:34
Power Injection: 10:35 - 15:14
Other Projects I have done: 15:15 - 16:15

Link to some of my full DIY LED how-to project videos:

LED Tutorials:

Unboxing Videos:

The best way to help support my channel is to like, comment, make sure your subscribed and share my videos with as many people as you can. The other way is to use my links above as I get a small % at no extra cost to you if you buy something. Thank you all for the support!

[IntermitTech]

Love the video, but I do have some serious concerns about the methods you now I don't want to be mean or degrading so please take this as constructive criticism, nothing else meant with it, we're all here to learn! I'm also fully open to discussion or questions, etc!

Overall assumed values:
300LEDs of ws2812b when properly injected can use up to 13Amps (65w) real-world, I've done extensive power measurements and publish a real-world power sheet for lots of types of LEDs to know what to expect and calculate with. For general usage I normally use the 50% white value which would be 6, 5Amps or 32, 5w to run single colors and effects at 100% brightness.

A single injection point cannot take in more then ~4Amps before voltage drop becomes too high and it basically won't do much anymore. If you want to power a 300LED strip of ws2812b for 100% RGB white you will need proper sized wires and front + middle + end injections, anything less then that and they won't be running at their full potential.

So in all scenarios shown you where running limited. Although that can be fine, this will also in part limit smoothness and such. Each LED has a Red, Green and Blue diode which have 256 steps of brightness. Limiting them also limits the range they can use and thus will things more "choppy". Basically 50% power means it now only has 128 steps, not 256. Now the WLED limiter is good and doesn't do this per LED but overall and in real-time, but still, using 850mA will for sure show this for instance.


Setup 1 - 2000mA phone charger
A. Make sure to test this charger can deliver a sustained 2000mA and won't overheat
B. The ESP board (circuit traces) and USB socket are not rated for anything close to 2000mA
C. The included USB cable probably already has quite a bit of resistance and will start to drop voltage over 1000mA
D. Dupont wires, please please don't use over 500mA on these
Running addressable LEDs like this can be done, but please don't exceed 850mA, even that is stressing it already in my opinion. Now this can be fine in some situations where you don't have a lot of LEDs or don't mind running them at low brightness, still, it can be dangerous (fire!) running more power through this setup, the hardware is NOT designed for it (dupont really shouldn't exceed 500mA). Most likely the resistance on the USB cable is already lowering voltage coming into the ESP board (and with it Amps) and then the dupont wires will lower it even more, but still. This is not the correct way to run any decent amount of LEDs...

Setup 2 - 5v 10Amp power supply
Already much better! But still I have issues....
A. Those barrel plug adapters, please please don't use them for 5v, it's stupid they come with them, they are not to be used over 3Amps continuous or will melt. But just snip off the barrel plug on the PSU wire and use those wires directly. :)
B. 18AWG wire is nice, but since you are only using it to power the ESP using dupont wires here would have been fine actually. :)
But as said, this setup is much better but won't draw more then 4Amps to maybe 5Amps before voltage drop becomes too much of an issue again. Still that can be fine for running single colors and some effects. It would however be better to use a 6 or 7.5Amp power supply since then if it has OCP that could provide a little bit of protection against shorts or other issues. A fuse here might be a good idea but the PSU not being giant also gives a bit of protection already (f it's good quality).

Setup 3 - 5v 60Amp power supply
Better but also somewhat worse. When using such big power supplies their internal protection mechanisms will not work for you anymore so you need to add protection yourself in the form of a fuse per injection line, etc.
A. Fuses!
B. Using a 20AWG 5m/16ft wire for 5v really doesn't work. In what you showed with front + end, it will equalize voltage a little bit, but really doesn't do enough. Voltage drop calculator says 16ft/5m of 20AWG doing 4Amps will have 1.3v of drop just on the wire alone which then becomes heat....
C. Adding the second strip make this problem worse since it's now not an edge connection but a middle injection capable of delivering up to ~8Amps into the strip effectively but as shown in the video, it already has 2.6v drop on just the wire alone. Now because it's 5v and the resistance makes the voltage drop it probably won't burn up, but it's not a good situation either as is kind of shown by the result in the video too.

So basically, all scenarios are seriously under powering the LEDs, this is also why at some point you won't see a difference when moving the sliders around in WLED for instance. This can be ok if that's a choice, but still. All scenarios also only work because you are attaching the very short wires on the LED strip directly to the power source, using the same type of wires even just a little bit longer will make all of the scenarios fail basically.

Now you mention in the video you aren't an expert in this and learning yourself, that's good! I kind of partly then think maybe not make "advice" videos like this on the subject but I also get you need to start somewhere. Maybe next time do a bit more analysis of your setups, include voltage measurements using a multi-meter at the start and end of the wire when set to a single color or 100% RGB white, do the same at the start middle and end of the strip, etc.. That would make it a bit more scientific and you'll start figuring out more why some of the stuff you are seeing is happening and what is a good situation and what isn't and can potentially be dangerous. :)

[andrewfrey]

It's great that you mention not just how much power these led strips use, but that not all the power can make it from one end to the other. A while back, I put up a bunch of warm white led strips and noticed that one side of the room was brighter than the other. Voltage drop from one end to the other was enormous.

[amirhaynes]

This is exactly what I was imagining I’d have to do. I’ve got a 48” run and plan on going 90% brightness with these same LEDs from Amazon. I don’t want to run any cables down the wall, so I plan on starting it from a closet. I’ll have to run 4 pairs of wires down to the third strip to have 0 degradation of power.

You’re the only person I see who actually explains and demonstrates it all step by step thank you so much!

[lezgettdrunk]

I was about to give up on WLED, but your walkthrough was the best and answered questions I had on the other ones I watched. Thank you for making this!

[mattm]

what a great tutorial and very different from others I have seen. Your practical approach and using the limiter to help maintain colors is great. This has shown me that there are many solutions beyond injecting power every X amount of pixels. Thank you and keep them coming.

[spocksvulcanbrain]

Well done. Exactly what we all need to know and were wondering about. Thank you. I'm impressed by how well the phone charger works. So much cheaper than the big boy option and we all have those chargers lying around.

[tomchaney]

Great videos and great work. As someone who watches tons of DIY YT videos I always skip and X2 the playback in order to sum up the videos. The style you have in delivering your information as well your video cuts and side bar walk-through leave me immersed and following along at normal speed. Great job keep up the great work. Very inspirational 👏 🙌

[Erik]

Thanks Chris! Ill use your videos as cuide for my first led addressable project. I was planning to conect 8 10m strips on a big roof. And now I think I will make it. Thanks to your videos, I will start with 1 line and see how it works 💓

[cometmace]

Great walk through. This is the only video I've seen that clearly shows an injection wire running all the way from the power source, along side the LED strip to the far end. Thanks for clearing that up!  

13:09 - There's an obvious color change for both the un-injected and single injected wiring for the two parallel LED strips.
14:25 - *I* see very little color change when only the beginning and middle injection points are enabled. Shouldn't this look exactly like 13:09?

[mankav]

Well done! Very good demo! I am gathering a few things to build my diy wled strip and I was wondering about the power supply, wether I should get a more powerful than my 5V/2A usb charger. Your video cleared a lot the things up. Kudos!

[khaledwaled]

Bro for real you are the man, I have been looking everywhere for these information, nobody explained it this good, you helped big time, love

[shadowboy]

Ok so I gave this a go .. and how fun is this! I'm gonna invite my mates over with their sons so we can have a LED workshop and make some lights for church. Thanks again :)

[steverhysjenks]

I'm just getting into WLED and this has been useful explaining runs and the concepts of injecting additional power

[aintnoair]

Thank you for the tutorial! I‘m new to diy led stuff but want to make kinda advanced stuff in my room… this video helped me perfectly!

[andreiceban]

Exactly what I was looking for! In my case I'll need about 13 Meter long led strip and I was pretty sure I wouldn't get away with connecting from one side only, but as I never ever touched any led strips had to make sure and I still got time in the home project! Thank you!

[Tom-ekoy]

Dude this is the best walk thru for this type of thing that i have every since thanks so much for sharing this info. This was exactly what ive been needing to know.

[ferrarig]

Dude you are the LED king. Thanks for making these videos so well

[eggspanda]

unfortunately my brain wasn't wired correctly to learn stuff. you came close though

[boocoo]

This was the exact video I was looking for. Thanks so much for the in-depth details.