Please forgive my newbness, I'm usually on the programming side of Arduino projects.
So, I'm trying to wire 3 5V WS2811s to an arduino to avoid buying 1 long one. I'm wondering if there's a way to get around giving each one it's own power source by connecting all of them to a breadboard's power rail.
So intuitively, it seems like I'd have to put 15V into the power rail. But figuring out voltage in parallel is never ever intuitive, so before I fry my fancy LEDs, what are you guys' suggestions?
Would it be simpler to just give them each their own power source?
...So intuitively, it seems like I'd have to put 15V into the power rail.
Do you mean 5V?
But figuring out voltage in parallel is never ever intuitive,
Actually, it's no problem. ...Everything in your house is wired in parallel to 120V or 240V (through different switches & circuit breakers) and everything in your car is wired in parallel to 12 (through different switches & fuses).
Just make sure your power supply can provide (at least) the required current (Amps).
So just to clarify, going off of this datasheet it looks like each component requires 10 mA.
The Arduino Uno I have puts out a max of ~450 mA from the 5V power supply.
If I plug the 5V power supply into a breadboard, and plug my LED strips into that power, on different rows, they'll be okay?
Is there some formula I can apply to this, or a wizard I can plug all this into?
Breadboards don't like high current, you may be better off soldering/screw-terminal all the strips supply and grounds
together to the supply, then leading off ground + data wires to the Arduino.