"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
06/14/2020 at 14:34 • Filed to: None
3
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"Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo" (akioohtori)
06/14/2020 at 14:34 • Filed to: None | 3
| 9 |
Ok... maybe not a fire. But certainly a bad smell.
Note: This post has nothing to do with cars. People do put these in cars. But I didn’t.
So I have this home office thing and I have some “happy lights” installed. First gen was a single strand of LED multicolor “Sakura” lights, but they didn’t quite cut it. I added a second strand buuuuuuuuut that still didn’t really do it for me.
The first problem is I had a very specific idea of what I wanted and they weren’t doing it.
What I remembered
What I got
Second because they were AC driven LEDs (which yes, is a thing) and not very well made, they flickered a lot.
Lastly the primary colors were blue and green, which look fine but aren’t exactly good sleep hygiene. (My office has my personal and work computers in it.) The controllers had the ability to adjust that but it worked very poorly.
So I needed a new solution.
My next thought was to ring the office with individually addressable RGB LED strip lights.
I’m not the biggest fan of the commercially available controllers, so I opted for 10 meters of neopixel strips (first mistake) with a LED density of 60 LEDs per meter. For the controller, against my best judgement I went with an Arduino Mega. I’ve never used one but I have a lot of bias against them for many reasons, both reasonable and unreasonable. For powered I went a little overkill and ordered a 50watt supply, which should give me 20% overhead.
Anyway, the former is where I made my little oops.
After writing and stealing the code I needed to drive all 600 of them in a way I found acceptable, I was ready for install. And so I did.
Up until this point I had been testing the LEDs on the reel, during which you aren’t supposed to put them at full brightness for heat dissipation issues. With them installed on the ceiling I finally took the leash off.
And it was a bit disappointing, if I’m honest.
Also with my new splicing and cutting to get them on the ceiling the last two strips were having issues with flickering and addressability.
Also the room smelled a bit like burning.
I knew these things sucked a lot of power and unfortunately I’d settled on the 5V models, so I knew voltage drop over a long run would be a problem, I solved the flickering by injecting power into both ends.
But they still were a little flickery and not very bright.
Perplexed I had some porch beer with some friends.
And re-checked the datasheet.
The strips aren’t 18 watt per five meter strip.
They are 18 watts per meter .
Oops.
So yeah the 50 watt power supply isn’t going to cope well with the 180 watt load of the LED strips.
Also explains the burning smell. Honestly that poor little supply did pretty freaking good for what I was asking of it.
So I’ve got a 300 watt supply on order and it will be here tomorrow.
Oh and I underestimated the number of LEDs I’d need. I bought 10 meters. I needed 10.2 meters.
Oops.
LastFirstMI is my name
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
06/14/2020 at 15:13 |
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Most of us would’ve just put it together without any math first, then when it smelled like burning ego, adjust the design randomly until it worked or the insurance adjuster arrived. Kudos to you for at least attempting to do it right!
Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> LastFirstMI is my name
06/14/2020 at 15:25 |
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Most of us? Speak for yourself, Pal. True, though...
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
06/14/2020 at 15:26 |
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Huh?
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/14/2020 at 15:51 |
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Is that not what the switch plates look like in your house?
Haha it is a 3D printed switch box that controls the stack light on the outside of my office so my partner knows what is going on. Red = conference call, Orange = concentrating, green = working but not very hard bug me for literally any reason please.
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
06/14/2020 at 16:05 |
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And what color combination says, “Peel me a grape?"
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
06/14/2020 at 16:06 |
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Well see that is why I needed the individually addressable RGB setup for finer control...
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Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
06/14/2020 at 17:09 |
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That’s the ticket.
kanadanmajava1
> Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
06/14/2020 at 18:09 |
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180 W of power for the LED strips sounds quite high. Can it really be 18 W/ m?
Operating 180 W LED high beam bar looks like this.
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Akio Ohtori - RIP Oppo
> kanadanmajava1
06/14/2020 at 18:31 |
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I am/was skeptical. That would be 300mW per LED which would be 20mA per color which is on part for high brightness RGB led... So I guess it makes sense? I certainly wouldn't expect it to be as bright as a similarly powered single color led array.