Hi, I have a project where I use SK6812 powered from battery.
However, the SK6812 seems to draw power even when they are off.
Becouse I'm trying to get a longer battery life, I'm trying to find an alternative to the SK6812, but I couldn't find anything with dees specs:
.low power consumption
.addressable LEDs
.worm white color
.low cost
Since a microcontroller is anyway required to drive addressable diodes, you can add a mcu controlled switch to the power line of the 6812 leds and completely disconnect them from the power when the device is not working. So you solve the problem with power consumption in the off state
LED strips are not the most more energy-efficient, but it's hard to beat the cost, simplicity, and convenience, especially if you want addressable LEDs.
I don't know about the off-power consumption but all of these LEDs strips use about 20mA per-LED, per-color. So with all 3 colors at full-brightness (=white) that's about 60mA or 300mW (5V x 60mA).
If you can find a white-only strip or an RGBW strip you can run white only and cut the current to 1/3rd.
Or. 12V strips have the LEDs wired (and addressed) in groups of 3 in series. That means the current is is 1/3rd with not quiet 3 times the voltage, for a slight energy savings. (Less energy is lost/wasted in the driver.)
Or maybe you can get-by with a strip that has fewer LED per meter.
I have 72 addressable LEDs in the prototype and if they are off I disconect the power. But I was hoping there might be a better solution, like some other type of LEDs.
Hoewer, thank you for the response.
Yeah that is my solution now but any saved energy is good even in ON state. And i think SK6812 leds consumes this energy always. I hope for some sk-eco or some other type to exist.
Hoewer, also thanks for response.
How do you turn the LEDs off now? RTC?
I dont know what you mean by rtc.
But now i turn off and on leds using relay.
Its not the best solution because relays clicking sound but i dont find any better solution.
RTC = real time clock to indicate at a time-of-day, when to remove power.
No i creating handheld lamp controlled by buttons.
No rtc required.
If the relay is too loud, try a solid-state relay.
Can't you use a mechanical switch to cut the power to the LEDs (and the Arduino)?
MOSFET? Like IRL44Z.
Take care to change the Arduino output pin back to an input when you city the power to the LEDs, otherwise phantom powering could occur.
Hi, I have another related question.
I assume that SK6812 draws current in ON state too.
Because i'm working on battery powered device, i want to reduce power consumption in both ON and OFF states as much as possible.
I am thinking about controlling RGBW leds directors.
Obviously Arduino doesn't have that many analog pins.
Have you any idea how can be done controlling cca 100 rgbw leds from Arduino?
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Thank you.
After some reasearch i found chip LP5036 that can control 9 RGBw leds and 4of them can be conected on same i2c bus (36leds) . (i cant find any chip with more controlable pins unfortunetly)
But iam not shure about poverconsumption.
This post on forum says that one SK6812 draws around 1mA (BLACK led).
Ant this Datasheet of LP5036 mentioning that LP5036RJVR in normal mode draws around 6.5-10mA.
That means the LP5036RJVR solution draws comparable mutch curent as SK6812 if it dont go in power-save mode, or i dont understand datasheet properly?
And have you somebody any experience with controling leds via LP5036RJVR or some other alternative ?
This is a string of addressable RGB LEDs that needs only Vcc, GND and ONE signal wire, and uses a library to communicate with each SK6812 (or, low-level programming). SK6812 is not an RGBW LED which requires wires for R, G, B and the common lead.
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