About two years ago we bought this house and each time we go down to the basement we talk about it being very plain and that we need to do something with it.
I'm not an electronics engineer, however, I'm a software developer so I can follow instruction fairly well and thus I got brave enough to ask you guys about an idea to fill this space with addressable LEDs
The area I have in mind is 30 feet long and 11.5" in height.
Obviously I will need to will this space with a bunch of LED strips to be able to do something exciting and this is where I need your help
What kind of LED strips would be a good choice for this?
Can the LED strips be made longer by soldering them together or maybe someone sells them in 30 feet length?
What power supply will be needed for this?
Will Arduino Mega 2560 be sufficient for this and will it be able to run multiple strips individually? I like the Glitter effect and I think this will look really neat with multiple strips.
Is there any projects that would be good to look at?
This will add a nice touch ... but there are so much wall space in that basement asking to do something with it.
I'm not ready to build a video wall behind a chair I just wanted to do something on a much smaller scale.
There are a lot of videos with all kinds of cool LED projects. Shimmering lights on 47th second of this video sold me and wife likes it too.
Will Arduino Mega 2560 be sufficient for this and will it be able to run multiple strips individually?
Yes
For the WS2812B (neopixel) strips you will need a 5V power supply(s).
There is voltage drop on these strips as they get longer so you may have to run power wires with the strip to power things at both ends.
Each pixel needs a maximum of 60mA (0.06A) amps.
Let's say you have a 5 meter strip of 60 pixels per meter (300 pixels); you need 60(leds)*5(meters)*60mA='18 amp 5v power supply' (strips come in 30, 60 and 144 LEDs per meter).
At 18 amps, you will need to be careful with wire size and short circuit protection.
For Arduino memory, you need 3 bytes per pixel, for 300 pixels that's 900 bytes of SRAM.
be sufficient for this
You do have to decide what you criteria is: #Pixels per meter, # of meters, # of strips, hiding the power supply wiring, how things will be mounted, how you want to control things, mounting and powering the Arduino.
The board is rather immaterial- what is important is the amount of RAM on the board; you need 3 bytes per LED plus whatever your program required. I ran 350 lights on our Christmas Tree using seven WS2812 strings of 50 LEDS per string, connected in series. The Arduino boards that I had on hand don't have enough RAM for this many LEDS. (I used a Wemos D1 Mini. It has WiFi and I could use Arduino OTA to program it over WiFi).
As stated above, you should power the LEDs on both ends. If you plan on 60mA per LED when you buy your power supply, you will be just fine. In my experience, the current draw is less than 60 mA when the LEDS are set to white, full brightness.
Personally, I like 12V RGB LEDS. 12V LEDS have less voltage drop. You don’t need to inject power as frequently as you do with 5V LEDS.
If this strip is going to be used for room lighting, you might consider using RGBW leds. The white is a separate LED instead of red plus green plus blue, so the current draw is only 20mA ler LED. It's a better "color" of white.
and a question about a user interface
in my basement you can see a door on the back wall which leads into a utility room/garage and my plan is to locate both a power supply and an arduino over there. but it would be inconvenient to walk there each time we need to change the lights sequence. Is there a method to control it from and iphone?
Vertebrate:
Looks like DC12V WS2815 Strip is Individually Addressable
Indeed.
The WS2815 is an interesting device. There are only three actual LED devices in the package.
They are apparently connected in series, drawing a constant 15 mA while ever any colour is enabled by the PWM.
Precisely how this is managed is unclear, but it means that while they draw only one third - or it seems, slightly less - of the maximum current, they do so while any colour is active, so while they are efficient when brightest, they are grossly inefficient for single colours.
SteveMann:
How are you physically planning to lay the system out? Can you draw a diagram of your room and where you plan to place th components?
If you look at the second post in this thread you will see my basement entertainment room.
Four LED strings will stretched along the ceiling step down and the power supply and controller will be located behind a wall pointed at by a left arrow
Vertebrate:
This will add a nice touch ... but there are so much wall space in that basement asking to do something with it.
I'm not ready to build a video wall behind a chair I just wanted to do something on a much smaller scale.
There are a lot of videos with all kinds of cool LED projects. Shimmering lights on 47th second of this video sold me and wife likes it too.
alright we can call it a beam .... not very close, there will be only 4 evenly spaced horizontal strips
I would like to control each strip individually, I think this what was shown in the video and I have no idea how to this yet.
Also I would like to have an option to chose a sequence from a control panel or a touch screen and if possible from an iphone.
