Preface: I'm new to electronics, so this might make you cringe. Hard. Bear with me, I'm trying to learn.
I'm trying to connect an Arduino to a 1 meter LED strip for a project.
The LED strip has a 5v requirement, and a maximum current draw of 3.6 amps (60ma per LED, 60 LEDs in 1 meter). This is far more than an Arduino can provide.
I wanted to connect a single power source to both the Arduino and the LED strip.
I figured the simplest would be to grab a 5v power supply that can provide 4A (3.6 forLED, remainder for Arduino).
The power supply would connect to the Arduino through USB (I can cut up and old USB cable and use that), and directly to the LED strip.
I can't find any 5V power adapters that can provide more than 2A safely. I found one of these, but that seems really expensive, and frankly overkill. How would you normally go about this?
How can I connect the power cable from the power supply to 2 separate pieces? My caveman brain tells me that I should cut off the barrel from the power supply, and connect the wires to the LED strip. Then I strip the middle of the power supply wires, and solder the USB cable wires to them. My wife, and smarter half, tells me I'm going to burn the house down.
Let's say I have a 9V power supply instead of 5V, and it provides all the current I need. I assume I can't wire that directly to the LED strip or Arduino. Instead I need to use something like a switching regulator. Is that right?
No, you show a Nano. You connect 5 V and ground to the 5V ("Vcc") pin and ground.
Your Amazon link corrected. No, very bad choice for several reasons including cost. Someone else posted (different language version of) this same unit just recently, also inappropriately.
A particular danger is that it is a variable supply, and there is a risk of mishandling and the knob being moved to deliver a totally wrong voltage and so burn out many parts.
You can use Samsung 5V,2A adaper. Those are cheaper. XIaomi smatphone chargers are fine too.
I think it will create unnecessary complications.
You can use 9V power supply. Vin pin of the arduino nano is used when you need to power it up with an external power supply, not from the USB. Vin cab be 7-12 V.
not enough current. Read LED information in first post.
Would work, but wrong approach. See post# 2. The 5V pin on the Nano can be input or output.
No, because although the Nano can take 9V in on the Vin pin, a converter is still needed to change 9V to 5V at the required current - Nano regulator isn't capable of this.
(with apologies for the link).
Since your visible profile doesn't identify your country, I have no idea where you might be buying your power supply, but the web is your friend - All I googled was "5V 4A DC supply", and this was the first link I got.
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First of all, thank you all for taking the time to educate me about this topic.
I'm not 100% following here. The Arduino Nano has a Micro USB slot. Wouldn't it make sense to connect from the power supply you linked to it? I was hoping to use the 5V pin on the Nano for another part of the project.
As for the link you provided, that makes a lot more sense to use! From what I'm seeing it has two connection points for the output, so I can connect a wire directly to the Arduino, and another to the LED strip.
The 2A adapter wouldn't meet my current needs since I need to draw approximately close to 4A. Fair point about the rest, I'll keep this in mind.
The component I linked, which I realize is not right for the project, should provide 5A, whereas the LED strip should require 3.6A max - why would it not work?
The component you linked to would work though - Googling it in my part of the world just gave me pages and pages of 2A wall-warts.
Ok, my brain kicked in. I can connect the 5V Power supply to my solderable breadboard, as I would usually use the Arduino 5v pin, and I can connect everything there. The power supply can then feed the Arduino, LEDs, and any other components that need it.
No. Unreliable connection, if you can solder (and you absolutely need to) then you solder all the 5 V connections together. The Micro USB jack is just for programming.
It is recommended to put a 470µF or 1 mF capacitor across the 5 V and ground at the very start of the LED strip. You already show the recommended 220 or 330 Ohm series resistor in the data line.
Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand the purpose of going higher voltage, lower current.
Wouldn't the end result be that I then need to buy a power supply providing 12V to the LED directly, and then step the voltage down before connecting it to the Arduino?
Indeed there are, but you were talking about drawing one third of the current, were you not?
Yes, but the current the Arduino draws is trivial compared to the LED strip, and a simple switchmode "buck" converter can provide it.
The problem is that if you want to draw one third of the current, you would need to use the 12 V strips that use three LEDs in series, so you can only control LEDs three at a time.
As I understand this the 12 V addressable LEDs has everything in one package: the LEDs, the current limiting resistor, the control chip. It makes sense there are three LEDs in series for each color - that should take the same amount of silicon area as one beefy LED (= the same cost to manufacture) but will be much more efficient. I may be wrong but I don't see any benefit in a 12 V single LED in series solution.
I agree before buying this it needs to be investigated to know what current it really takes.
No, very bad choice for several reasons including cost. Someone else posted (different language version of) this same unit just recently, also inappropriately.
