Greetings, I hope everyone is doing well.
I am making a LED matrix 64x24 where there is 64 LED in every strip and there are 24 strips. The LED strip I am using is called WS2812B; I connected the 24 strips by soldering them together, and have added five reinjection points every five meters of length (since the current decreases by 0.06 A/RGB LED). I am using Arduino Mega 2560 to control the pixels and have used an external power supply that gives 5v and 10 amps (max input for this type of LEDs is 5v). This external power supply is connected to a breadboard that connects the Arduino and LED strips together. The power supply was originally a laptop charger which is why I have cut the end of this adapter and stripped the ground and live wires to be able to connect them to the breadboard. I added to my breadboard a resistor (220 ohms) and a capacitor (100 micro-Farads) to ensure that my LEDs won’t burn out. My problem is that my LED matrix wont light up, not only that but also when I plug in the power supply smoke starts coming out of the breadboard. After looking closers turns out that some enclosures of my wires are melting, and my guess is that my breadboard can’t handle more than 1amp. So, what would you recommend me to do to overcome this problem? and is my deduction of the problem being related to the breadboard right? If so, I am thinking of removing the breadboard and connecting everything by soldering but don’t know how to include the capacitor and resistor…
Thank you for your help in advance.
Links to my components:
LED strips:
Power supply:
Arduino Mega:
Breadboard is the solder-less type that was gotten by Arduino Starter Kit.
Code:
#include <avr/pgmspace.h> // this is needed to store the scenes and characters in flash memory FLASH not SRAM which is the one used for storing the variables. Im doing this because Flash has larger bytes
#include <FastLED.h>
#define LEDPIN 3
#define COLOR_ORDER GRB
#define LED_TYPE WS2812B
#define NUM_LEDS 1536
uint8_t MAX_BRIGHTNESS= 8;
CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];
void setup() {
LEDS.addLeds<LED_TYPE, LEDPIN, COLOR_ORDER>(leds, NUM_LEDS);
FastLED.setBrightness(MAX_BRIGHTNESS);
}
void loop() {
for(int i=0; i<NUM_LEDS; i++){
leds[i]= CHSV(32,255,255);
FastLED.show();
delay(40);
}
}
So, what would you recommend me to do to overcome this problem? and is my deduction of the problem being related to the breadboard right? If so, I am thinking of removing the breadboard and connecting everything by soldering but don't know how to include the capacitor and resistor…
I connected the 24 strips by soldering them together, and have added five reinjection points every five meters of length (since the current decreases by 0.06 A/RGB LED)
Good start but you need power injection points a lot more than every 5m. Probably every 1m will be OK, at the very least each end and the middle of every strip. Take each pair of wires back to the PSU, not a daisy chain. The wires coming out of that PSU don't look thick enough for 10A.
Your drawing does not show the power injection, what else does it not show?
As Paul says, you can't use breadboard for anything high power, you need thick wires and soldered connections.
I don't know what you mean about the capacitor and the resistor, solder them in place. You will have to ask a clearer question if that's not the answer you are looking for.
Thank you Paul and Perry really appreciate your inputs. I will change the wires that are coming out of the PSU to thicker ones, and will solder everything together discarding of the breadboard as well as adding an injection point for every 1m. Here is another schematic of how I will potentially solder everything (included the injection points), is there anything wrong with it (the order of the connections to the G and +V wire) ? And since I will solder wires everything will be loose and will jumble up do you have any recommendation on how to mount them?
Note that you are supplying power to both ends of each strip so the power (and of course, ground) lines should be the relatively heavy ones to both ends of the strips, and that includes the "loose" end of the left hand strip above.
And the data from one to the next should definitely accompany at least the ground as you have illustrated.
The capacitor and resistor are believed to be most important at the actual data start of the first strip.
Thank you very much for your help, I will make sure the wires I’m using are heavy ones and insert the capacitor before the first LED strip. Again thank you Paul and Perry, hope you have a lovely day.
