On the Internet, users can find a lot of scattered information about what rules should be followed when installing LED strips. This question is really relevant for those who want to fully understand the subject and do most of the work on their own. Today we will try to systematize the basic provisions and combine the theoretical side of the issue with the practical side as much as possible.
Unlike fixtures, LED strips are a technology that needs to think through a significant number of details. The right choice and combination of length, power, and brightness, as well as the correct use of a power supply, dimmer or controller for different types of tapes are the key to the long-term and reliable operation of products. Those readers who are more interested in various options for connection schemes will find the article “ How to connect an LED strip ” written earlier in our blog useful. Well, for those who would like to explore many other nuances, we invite you to read this material.
Analysis of individual aspects
All of today’s information will be presented in the thesis as led lights strip 10 meter if consumers were asking their questions to a living person, and he advised them on certain nuances. We really hope that every home master will be able LED strips to learn something from the material presented.
What do you need to know before buying an LED strip?
First of all, you need to study the place where the blue led light strips will be mounted. Most often, consumers express a desire to illuminate the ceiling and measure the total footage as the perimeter of the room at an average wall height. In fact, in every third case, the walls in domestic apartments were not erected very evenly. As a result, there is a slight taper in one direction or another.
It is best to purchase a piece of tape with a small margin. Even if your partitions are of high quality, leave room for it to conveniently solder. The wires at the ends or give yourself the right to make a mistake. In addition, layout options are possible when people simply forget that a beam. Column or ventilation duct runs under their ceiling. Which is why an unaesthetic ledge is located at the right height. To place the backlight on it, the footage must be measured correctly. Exactly at the height at which the product will be positioned. 10 Healthy Sweet Snack That Will Satisfy Your Craving
Where can the tape be cut?
Different models of tapes have different cutting ratios. If for some reason you decide to install a 220 V LED strip, and not a conventional low-voltage product, start from the position that it can only be cut very large: a multiple of one meter. There are manufacturers who allow a smaller multiplicity – half a meter, but such models will have to be searched very well.
In the vast majority of cases, a 12 V LED strip is suitable for home use. Depending on the model, power and size of the diodes, their cutting ratio can be 2.5 cm, 5 cm or 10 cm. One way or another, it will be quite simple to hide or beat just a couple of extra centimetres during installation, which cannot be said about high-voltage products.
What is the main parameter to choose a tape?
Each consumer determines this aspect for himself. In the first place is usually the colour of the product. For those who want to make just a beautiful and inexpensive backlight, a monochrome model is suitable, and for buyers who are aimed at a rich light picture with shades and overflows, a colour RGB tape is suitable. The next priority is brightness.
It can be judged by the value of the indicated luminous flux, the specific power consumption of the model and by the number of diodes in one meter. The higher the last indicator, the more uniform the illumination in the room. That is, with equal nominal brightness, it is the tape with a high density of LED elements that will visually look more advantageous.
How many power supplies are needed to light multiple rooms in an apartment?
It is this question that most often confuses consumers. After reading on various forums about the 5-meter length limit, they believe that for 13 m of tape they will have to purchase as many as three power supplies: two for five-meter sections and one for three-meter. In reality, everything will depend on the total power of the consumer diodes in the circuit you are assembling.
In order for each tape to work for a long time and without dips in brightness along its entire length, it is really necessary to connect it to the PSU in segments of no more than five meters. Nevertheless, no one forbids connecting as many segments as necessary to one power device. The main thing is to do this not sequentially but in parallel. If you have known footage of more than five meters (and this is exactly what always happens when lighting the ceiling of an ordinary living room), break this length into several segments and power them from one block. The most important thing is to correctly calculate the power consumption.
How to calculate power supply capacity? How to take into account the margin for the total capacity of several segments?
Knowing this value is enough to multiply it by the actual footage of the product. For example, for a tape with a power of 20 W / m and a length of five meters, the actually consumed load will be 20 * 5 \u003d 100 W. For the correct operation of the chain, LED strips is necessary to take a margin of 20%. Accordingly, in this situation, a 120 W unit will be used.
Let you also not be afraid of the need to take into account the power margin in excess of the calculated value when crushing your tape into separate fragments. It can be calculated both for each segment and for the total footage. Mathematically, the result will be the same.
Which wires to choose for laying a parallel connection of tapes?
When connecting more than five meters. It is inevitably necessary to run an additional wire in parallel with the working section of the tape. Which allows you to connect power to the next fragment. Too long veins will have considerable resistance, and therefore in each case. To calculate the cable cross-section, it is enough to know the magnitude of the current strength and the intended method of installation.
The task of the amplifier is to reduce the load on the controller, which prolongs the last service life and allows you to synchronously control the change in colour, brightness or modes on all connected segments. By itself, the amplifier cannot increase the brightness of the tape, since this characteristic depends on the optical properties of the LED crystal. Thanks to a stable supply voltage, there will be no areas that “sag” in brightness along the entire length of the tape.
Which is better: dimmer or controller?
Usually, their task is to smoothly change one parameter, and from the additional functionality. A strobe function and/or a timer may be available.
In turn, controllers are used for multicolour ribbons. They allow you to mix colours, change shades, set a monochromatic glow in any tone, run dynamic modes, etc. That is, in a circuit with a controller, the dimmer will be redundant, and in a circuit with monochrome tape. The controller will not be applicable.
Is it necessary to increase the brightness?
Almost all lighting structures made using LED strips have fairly large footage. The amplifier is not a powerful device on par with the power supply.
Controller selected by the consumer is not enough to control the entire required length of the tape. Of course, the user is free to install an additional controller. But this will lead to the appearance of several remote controls tied to controlling the backlight of the same object. It is unlikely that this will be convenient for anyone. And synchronizing them by colour will significantly add trouble for users.
Conclusion
The easiest way to solve this problem is to proceed from the opposite. Let’s ask ourselves, how many meters of tape can we connect to a given amperage controller? Dividing it by the specific power of the tape (14.4 W / m), we get 10 meters.
Given the same current strength of the devices. The same number is the maximum possible for a connection to a twelve-ampere controller. Here again, it is necessary to add a power margin of 20-25%. In the condition of the problem. There is larger footage than that obtained by calculation. So the need to use an amplifier becomes obvious. We see that the controller resources are only enough for the first 10 meters. Since the second segment is 10 m, the minimum design power of the amplifier should be exactly.
