My question is: Can i connect multiple (4 lines) led strips to one arduino? 3x8pcs rgb led 1x16pcs rgb led
Watched some youtube videos about it, but i dont know if i can connect multiple strips to one 5v power and ground, then 4 different data lines? If i share the power line they will be less bright?
I want to be able to control them separetly.
I dont really know what should i buy 1 nano or multiple or 1 uno? Do i need a power supply for this or can is use it from pc usb port?
You definitely need a seperate power supply, and one that has enough output to handle the LEDs.
You didn't specify the exact type of LEDs, but there are those that are generally daisy chainable and can be programmed directly (for example the WS2812b).. i.e. you can hook them all up as one long strip and tell them directly to light up specific LEDs and what color, without a need for seperate data lines for each strip.
If they are the type that has an R, G and B line, those usually need 12V per line and are not seperately controllable.. so the entire strip lights up in the selected color, no way to make them turn on selectively.
arakon:
You definitely need a seperate power supply, and one that has enough output to handle the LEDs.
You didn't specify the exact type of LEDs, but there are those that are generally daisy chainable and can be programmed directly (for example the WS2812b).. i.e. you can hook them all up as one long strip and tell them directly to light up specific LEDs and what color, without a need for seperate data lines for each strip.
If they are the type that has an R, G and B line, those usually need 12V per line and are not seperately controllable.. so the entire strip lights up in the selected color, no way to make them turn on selectively.
The rev light will be WS2812b, the other 3 will be for flags, they need to be able to turn on/off separetly but only need 1 color/strip, not like on the picture.
Is there a max value how much electricity an arduino nano can handle?
Whats the benefit of the uno over the nano in this case?
flikenflaken24:
The rev light will be WS2812b, the other 3 will be for flags, they need to be able to turn on/off separately but only need 1 color/ strip, not like on the picture.
WS2812s are suggested because they are easy to drive - you simply connect an Arduino pin to the input of the chain and run code - no other components necessary.
You can use a strip of WS2812s and then chain three separate WS2812s following them. Or preceding them. You still only require one pin to drive them
flikenflaken24:
Is there a max value how much electricity an Arduino Nano can handle?
Yes. Basically none. The Nano does not "handle" electricity in any manner apart from a few milliamps out of the pin. You have a 5 V regulated supply which powers the WS2812s and you connect that same regulated 5 V in parallel to the "5V" pin on the Nano to power it - along with the ground of course. That Nano uses whatever current it needs - a few tens of milliamps.
flikenflaken24:
Whats the benefit of the UNO over the Nano in this case?
I can think of no "advantage" of a UNO. The Nano is smaller, cheaper, generally comes with separate header pins so you can choose to either solder connections to the pads or mount the header pins and plug it into a "Terminal Shield" or solder it onto a piece of stripboard.
The UNO's socket headers are inconvenient to connect and do not match the pattern of protoboard or stripboard. It is only useful if a particular "shield" when plugged onto it, implements your particular requirement in one go. And you have to be careful powering it via its "5V" pin when connected to a PC whereas the Nano has no such restriction.
Okay, my english isnt the best, its a bit hard to understand to me.
Whats in my head:
1st a button box with 6 buttons.
2nd 4 led strips /3 for flag lights on the back of each monitor (cannot connect them togheter) and 1 rev light/
I want to use toggle switch to turn them on/off separetly.
I use Simhub software for the buttons and leds.
As i understood correctly i need a stand alone power supply for this much led strip.
Can i use one arduino nano for all this or i need two (1 for the buttons and 1 for the lights)?
I want the end product to look something like this.
Excuse me for the terrible paint and my lack of knowledge.
You need a power supply, regulated 5 V. A Nano is not - in any respect whatsoever - a power supply so this was never in question.
I have just noticed your thumbnail of an 8 LED strip in your first post. 24 WS2812 LEDs plus three more - let's say for 30 WS2812s you would need 1.6 Amps maximum. A readily available USB "phone charger" rated at 2.1 Amps would do nicely, though you need to split out the 5 V and ground wires to connect directly to the LED strips and "5V" pin on the Nano, not using the Nano's USB socket.
Now it is quite simple to connect the "data out" of one 8-LED strip or separate LED to the "data in" of the next - always connecting the ground from one to the next at the same time so that data and ground (and possibly 5 V as well) run together as a pair. Your code can distinguish between the various parts of the resulting chain. If that is really impractical due to distance between strips (which does not seem to be the case if they are all in a modest sized box) then you could use separate Nano pins for each data connection and multiple instances of the NeoPixel code.
You have quite sufficient digital pins on the Nano - 18 in total - to control 6 LED chains if you really needed to and 6 buttons or switches. It is quite easy to read 16 buttons or switches using eight I/O pins so those numbers are not by any means a problem.
Using more than one Arduino actually introduces undesirable problems of communication between them and is to be avoided wherever possible.
There will be 4x0.5m led strips, thats about 36W + 2x2.5W fan.
50W supply is safe for this? Do i need to power the Nano from the PSU or its enough from the pc usb?
You have a regulated 5 V power supply. Use it to power the Nano via the "5V" pin.
Do be careful however, about the wiring. Power and ground always run as a pair. You feed power to the first LED strip and from there back to the Nano - along with the data wire - three wires together.
Now, the data to the second LED strip must travel along with its ground wire, so it must run back to where the power tees off to the first LEDs strip, then back to that first LEDs strip and together with the power and ground and data wire to the Nano. There must be no open loops in the wiring. Essentially, the Nano should be directly alongside the power supply so that the three wires to each LED strip all take off from there as a bundle to each strip.
And the 1 mF capacitor across 5 V and ground and the 470 Ohm resistor in series with the data line at the start of each strip.
And the power (including ground of course) must be taken alongside each LED strip so that it bridges into the LED strip at least every metre which means that if a strip is a metre long, the power should connect to both ends.
(Your project appears to have grown over a few days! )
Paul__B:
You have a regulated 5 V power supply. Use it to power the Nano via the "5V" pin.
Do be careful however, about the wiring. Power and ground always run as a pair. You feed power to the first LED strip and from there back to the Nano - along with the data wire - three wires together.
Now, the data to the second LED strip must travel along with its ground wire, so it must run back to where the power tees off to the first LEDs strip, then back to that first LEDs strip and together with the power and ground and data wire to the Nano. There must be no open loops in the wiring. Essentially, the Nano should be directly alongside the power supply so that the three wires to each LED strip all take off from there as a bundle to each strip.
And the 1 mF capacitor across 5 V and ground and the 470 Ohm resistor in series with the data line at the start of each strip.
And the power (including ground of course) must be taken alongside each LED strip so that it bridges into the LED strip at least every metre which means that if a strip is a metre long, the power should connect to both ends.
(Your project appears to have grown over a few days! )
Its getting harder, i cant understand now.
First here is the video from where i got the idea. DIY Rev light
In this video the guy only connects to one end of the strip. He does not go back to the nano from the other end of the strip. I dont know now how to connect these... And i need resistors too?
Its getting too complicated i think i might give up, i dont have enough electrical knowledge for this.
I thought im close to the finish...
One is that the guy building the button box in the YouTube video doesn't seem to know what he is doing - the diodes are missing from his wiring design!
You started out referring to 8-LED strips as per the "Rev light" video. That is easy enough to power; you can power 16 WS2812 LEDs through a Nano as long as most of them are never set to white or a pale colour.
But now you start talking of 4 x 0.5m LED strips requiring a 36 Watt power supply. This is a totally different ball game! There are extra components recommended for reliable and safe operation of the WS2812 that were omitted in the "Rev light" design which are likely to matter once you start using large numbers of the LEDs so you need perhaps to do some more research to understand what is involved.
Paul__B:
I can think of no "advantage" of a UNO. The Nano is smaller, cheaper, generally comes with separate header pins so you can choose to either solder connections to the pads or mount the header pins and plug it into a "Terminal Shield" or solder it onto a piece of stripboard.
The biggest problem with the Uno is the small memory chip. Assuming that you will be using the fastLED.h library, you need three bytes per LED. A couple hundred LEDs and your program, and you're out of memory pretty fast.
You want to figure out how much power you need, you need to say how bright you make the lights.
Each pixel should draw maximum 20mA per color used. The brightest white = full red + full green + full blue = 60mA.
You can limit the leds to less than say 30mA by never lighting any more than that. You can store a color table in flash memory to save RAM space and make the tabled colors all use < 30mA and then 8 pixels would not use > 240mA power.
The strip has little traces between leds? The strip can be cut there and wires soldered to the traces, sites that sell the strips often show the details.
I found WS2811 RGB led strings. The led is in a frosted 12mm bulb and there are 7 or 8 cm wires between each bulb. They are Christmas Tree lights, the bulbs can be poked through 1/2 inch holes (.5mm total clearance, snug fit) to make great big indicator lights. The wires are easier to deal with than the pads on strips but WS2811 can't be fine little close-spaced dots.
You can light as many strips or strings as you can power. You can hook one line to the end of another or cut a line into sections, I bought 5M, 50 bulb string for US$15. I have a WS2812 strip but with my big fingers and old eyes the WS2811 is much easier.
Once you power the line of leds it only takes signal power from Arduino, 1 pin to send new colors for every led.
The FastLed library makes it easy. You fill an array with color values or maybe just change a few in the array then call the Show function and the leds change to match the array.
Paul__B:
There are a few points of confusion here!
One is that the guy building the button box in the YouTube video doesn't seem to know what he is doing - the diodes are missing from his wiring design!
You started out referring to 8-LED strips as per the "Rev light" video. That is easy enough to power; you can power 16 WS2812 LEDs through a Nano as long as most of them are never set to white or a pale colour.
But now you start talking of 4 x 0.5m LED strips requiring a 36 Watt power supply. This is a totally different ball game! There are extra components recommended for reliable and safe operation of the WS2812 that were omitted in the "Rev light" design which are likely to matter once you start using large numbers of the LEDs so you need perhaps to do some more research to understand what is involved.
Youre right i dont know enough for this. First i thought that i can connect a few wires and it will work just like that, but it grow a lot since then.
I will ask one of my car electrician friend to help me with this, soldering and stuff but i want to make sure he wont mess up something, so please can you help me out finish my sketch?
I tried to simplify my setup i think i can run 3x0,5m led strip in series on the back of my monitors. I can work out the different colors for each section in the software.
I want another 0.5m strip fully separated from those 3 above.
As my english isnt very good, this i what i understood from the tips.
Somehow i need to connect the 1.5m led strips other end back to the nano?
How should i connect the 0.5m strip, does it need the same 1mF and 470Ohm?
Yes, that diagram is a good start. You have found out about the resistor and capacitor.
Given that the Nano and power supply are close together, you can branch out the second data with 5 V and ground from the "T" where the power branches back into the Nano. And that strip should also have the capacitor and resistor at its beginning.
You can put strips in series but as the foils carrying the power are fairly lightweight, you need to carry the two power wires not just to the start of the first strip, but also alongside the strips with something like 1 mm2 wire to tap 5 V and ground into the strips at least every metre if not more often, including the far end.
With your 0.5 M strips, tap the power in where the connections run from each strip to the next and the far end. When I say "tap it in", I mean that the power connection runs from one strip to the next, and the additional power cable continues running alongside, but 5 V and ground are bridged from one to the other.
Paul__B:
Yes, that diagram is a good start. You have found out about the resistor and capacitor.
Given that the Nano and power supply are close together, you can branch out the second data with 5 V and ground from the "T" where the power branches back into the Nano. And that strip should also have the capacitor and resistor at its beginning.
You can put strips in series but as the foils carrying the power are fairly lightweight, you need to carry the two power wires not just to the start of the first strip, but also alongside the strips with something like 1 mm2 wire to tap 5 V and ground into the strips at least every metre if not more often, including the far end.
With your 0.5 M strips, tap the power in where the connections run from each strip to the next and the far end. When I say "tap it in", I mean that the power connection runs from one strip to the next, and the additional power cable continues running alongside, but 5 V and ground are bridged from one to the other.
Slowly but we are getting there.
This is how it should be then? I changed the power supply to 75W to give myself more safety and to avoid heating.
I cant get my head around why i need the resistor in the data line, but im fine with that, im following your guide. The 470Ohm and the 1mF will work on both strips or do i need different sizes?
I should connect both end of the 0.5M strip to the 5v and ground?
I am liking the 2811 bulbs more every time I see this thread.
I run 50 bulbs fast or slow and need no resistor or capacitor or wires at the far end.
It's just 5V and GND to the string red and black wires, data pin on the controller to the string and board GND connect to GND to the leds.
I can cut the string into pieces and give each a data pin but.... why?
In software the leds are all in array that making it 1 array per piece saves tiny bits of time at the cost of more pins.
" I changed the power supply to 75W to give myself more safety and to avoid heating. "
You have 24 leds that can at most use 60mA each for total 1.44A x 5V = 7.2W.
It is good to have at least twice the power capacity you need so the supply never pushes hard, lives longer.
GoForSmoke:
I am liking the 2811 bulbs more every time I see this thread.
I run 50 bulbs fast or slow and need no resistor or capacitor or wires at the far end.
It's just 5V and GND to the string red and black wires, data pin on the controller to the string and board GND connect to GND to the leds.
I can cut the string into pieces and give each a data pin but.... why?
In software the leds are all in array that making it 1 array per piece saves tiny bits of time at the cost of more pins.
" I changed the power supply to 75W to give myself more safety and to avoid heating. "
You have 24 leds that can at most use 60mA each for total 1.44A x 5V = 7.2W.
It is good to have at least twice the power capacity you need so the supply never pushes hard, lives longer.
Things has changed a lot since the initial 8 led idea.
I already ordered the 2812b leds, and its 2meters long, it will be cut into 4 pieces because i want the to be well separated for various effects. My first thought was that i will control each 0.5m strip with different data line, but i can do almost the same with 2. Thats because the 4th strip is going to be 2-3 meters away from the rest, i can connect the 3 reamining togheter.
Thats overall 120 leds calculated with the factory specs it will be 36W in total + 2 pieces pc fan 5W and we are at 41W, thats why i choosed to go with the 75W instead of the 50W supply.
flikenflaken24:
I cant get my head around why i need the resistor in the data line, but im fine with that, im following your guide. The 470Ohm and the 1mF will work on both strips or do i need different sizes?
I should connect both end of the 0.5M strip to the 5v and ground?
The resistor helps to reduce some of the noise on the data line that high-frequency square waves generate. 4K7 works for most installations.
Yes, connect both ends of the strip to the power supply. Use a wire size that is appropriate for the wire length and current required.
You have a 5 V regulated supply which powers the WS2812s and you connect that same regulated 5 V in parallel to the "5V" pin on the Nano to power it - along with the ground of course. 
That Nano uses whatever current it needs - a few tens of milliamps. 
