Hello everyone!
I currently have a thread running that seems to have reached its natural conclusion for the questions I originally posed in it. However, I have a different set of questions now, and I felt it was more appropriate to give it its own thread, rather than try to merge it with the first, and change the title. Thank you to everyone who helped. This is going to be a long read though, so apologies in advance.
The Short Story:
So, if everything with Ebay goes through and I'm able to return the crap power supplies, my two ideas are:
1) To buy a LRS Series power supply outputting at around 14V. Then get a standard 16AWG cable at 20 feet, hook it up, and set the supply's output voltage to whatever it needs to be in order to get 12V at the end of the wire. Now, this would be done without a load hooked up, so there would be essentially no voltage drop through the wire. However, I will rely on the online calculations which show that I can expect a 2V drop across the wire at 12.37A, so i will set the power supply to its lowest output, around 13.5V, and work up from there once it's hooked up to the panels, until I'm reading 12.0V while the whole system is running.
or 2) to find and buy a power supply with a voltage that's much higher than what I need, like around 24V, then feed it through the long thin wire, and then use a DC-DC step down regulator to bring whatever the voltage at the end of the line is, back down to 12V for the load.
The only complication is this:
What you see in that spoiler is the control box for the panel, with the three 25kHZ PWM dimmers inside. And you might notice at the bottom... a C13 connector.
Yes, yes, I know, don't use AC plugs for DC projects. I get it, I learned my lesson. But, there's no going back now, they can't be swapped out. Those aluminum panels were cut to fit the plugs and I can't swap it for something different unless it has the exact same shape and size.
SO, whatever power supply I get, I'll wire the output up to a C13 Computer power cord.
Anyways, yeah, any help, suggestions, or ideas I can get would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!
-Ty
I currently have a thread running that seems to have reached its natural conclusion for the questions I originally posed in it. However, I have a different set of questions now, and I felt it was more appropriate to give it its own thread, rather than try to merge it with the first, and change the title. Thank you to everyone who helped. This is going to be a long read though, so apologies in advance.
So, I'm building a set of photography lights that make use of 5050 LED strips. There are four panels in total, two large, and two small. The two large panels use 10m of 5050LED strips, which yields a (multimeter-tested) current draw of 12.3A at 12V-DC EACH. The two small panels are half of this, each. In the spoiler below is a picture of one of the small panels, just for illustrative purposes.
Now, the problem I'm having is that when purchasing all of my parts for this project, I bought some brandless, nameless, waterproof LED drivers from Ebay, at the well-meaning suggestions of some people on the forums.
These power supplies arrived, and ended up being ridiculously heavy. Over 5 lbs each for the 200W variant.
My original plan was to mount the power supplies to the panels directly and feed into them with just a few inches of wire, but that simply isn't possible with that kind of weight, so now, the power supplies have to sit on the ground and feed the power to the panels through a long wire. The wire has to be AT LEAST 11 feet long, to reach the top of the tripods these lights get mounted to. Using a typical 18AWG cable, I'd lose something stupid like 4V from the 12V supply, since it's being driven at 12.3A.
Suffice it to say, in the previous thread, people helped me settle on the idea of buying some thick-a-- cables, like 8 or 10 AWG four-conductor, to minimize the voltage losses due to wire resistance. Fine and dandy, except that between the wire, and other components I'd need to make that work, I'm looking at $140. I'd really like to avoid spending that much given that the entire project was only around 520.
SO, after some dealings with EBAY, it seems like I MIGHT be able to return the shitty power supplies after all! That's where this thread comes in. I'm hoping to get some help picking out PROPER power supplies to get this system working. I STILL need to feed the power through a long cable, though. As i started putting these panels together, I realized that I simply can't add any more weight to them. So we're still looking at a 11 foot cable minimum, but 20ft preferably.
Now, the problem I'm having is that when purchasing all of my parts for this project, I bought some brandless, nameless, waterproof LED drivers from Ebay, at the well-meaning suggestions of some people on the forums.
These power supplies arrived, and ended up being ridiculously heavy. Over 5 lbs each for the 200W variant.
My original plan was to mount the power supplies to the panels directly and feed into them with just a few inches of wire, but that simply isn't possible with that kind of weight, so now, the power supplies have to sit on the ground and feed the power to the panels through a long wire. The wire has to be AT LEAST 11 feet long, to reach the top of the tripods these lights get mounted to. Using a typical 18AWG cable, I'd lose something stupid like 4V from the 12V supply, since it's being driven at 12.3A.
Suffice it to say, in the previous thread, people helped me settle on the idea of buying some thick-a-- cables, like 8 or 10 AWG four-conductor, to minimize the voltage losses due to wire resistance. Fine and dandy, except that between the wire, and other components I'd need to make that work, I'm looking at $140. I'd really like to avoid spending that much given that the entire project was only around 520.
SO, after some dealings with EBAY, it seems like I MIGHT be able to return the shitty power supplies after all! That's where this thread comes in. I'm hoping to get some help picking out PROPER power supplies to get this system working. I STILL need to feed the power through a long cable, though. As i started putting these panels together, I realized that I simply can't add any more weight to them. So we're still looking at a 11 foot cable minimum, but 20ft preferably.
The Short Story:
So, if everything with Ebay goes through and I'm able to return the crap power supplies, my two ideas are:
1) To buy a LRS Series power supply outputting at around 14V. Then get a standard 16AWG cable at 20 feet, hook it up, and set the supply's output voltage to whatever it needs to be in order to get 12V at the end of the wire. Now, this would be done without a load hooked up, so there would be essentially no voltage drop through the wire. However, I will rely on the online calculations which show that I can expect a 2V drop across the wire at 12.37A, so i will set the power supply to its lowest output, around 13.5V, and work up from there once it's hooked up to the panels, until I'm reading 12.0V while the whole system is running.
or 2) to find and buy a power supply with a voltage that's much higher than what I need, like around 24V, then feed it through the long thin wire, and then use a DC-DC step down regulator to bring whatever the voltage at the end of the line is, back down to 12V for the load.
The only complication is this:
What you see in that spoiler is the control box for the panel, with the three 25kHZ PWM dimmers inside. And you might notice at the bottom... a C13 connector.
Yes, yes, I know, don't use AC plugs for DC projects. I get it, I learned my lesson. But, there's no going back now, they can't be swapped out. Those aluminum panels were cut to fit the plugs and I can't swap it for something different unless it has the exact same shape and size.
SO, whatever power supply I get, I'll wire the output up to a C13 Computer power cord.
Anyways, yeah, any help, suggestions, or ideas I can get would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your time!
-Ty
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