I'm a complete newbie to hobby electronics (although my undergrad was in Mechatronics), and I'm looking for some recommendations for powering LED Light strips.
I'm planning on using about 2.2m of the strip in a costume and from what I've read they seem to have pretty high current requirements:
Voltage: 5-7V regulated supply
Peak Current: 3A per metre
Power drop at peak: 0.6V per metre
Intended usage
I intend to have them pulse/cascade with movement/sound, so my expected peak use case is probably along the lines of:
Peak: 2A per metre for less than 2 seconds sustained
Median draw: probably 0.8 - 1.2A per metre
Avg draw: probably 0.3 - 0.5A per metre
There will be three separate strips, that can be powered separately.
Any suggestions on a portable (i.e. wearable) power source?
You may find that you don't need anything like 100% duty cycle for these strips
when indoors or at night, modern LEDs can be extremely bright - until you measure
the actual average current under realistic conditions the best you can do is make
conservative assumptions.
So about 1A average for 2.2m of strips? For 5 hours? That's 5Ah.... Perhaps 2S LiPo,
which is 7.4V. If so then take care as LiPo have to be handled properly, and always
constitute a possible fire risk (use a fire-proof LiPo bag for instance). Alternatively
6V SLA which will be heavier, perhaps a belt-mounted box to carry it.
Its simple to have several smaller batteries and change them as necessary too, can
be less cumbersome and you can be recharging the one(s) not currently in use.