Questions about powering Dotstars with a Raspberry Pi4

EL Wire/Tape/Panels, LEDs, pixels and strips, LCDs and TFTs, etc products from Adafruit

Moderators: adafruit_support_bill, adafruit

Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.
Locked
User avatar
JGarrettFL
 
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Feb 01, 2023 1:45 pm

Questions about powering Dotstars with a Raspberry Pi4

Post by JGarrettFL »

For a 7m continuous array of Dotstar 144 run will a 5vDC, 60a, 300w power supply be sufficient?
Can a 7m long strip be purchased or do I need to join 7 individual 1m LED strips together?
If I have to join 7 individual strips together do I need to have a power tap in between each strip? This is going to make mounting the strips very difficult.
If power-taps are needed is the AllPixel Power Tap Kit the correct component?
Will I need a Logic Level Shifter to step the power output from the Raspberry Pi4 controller up to 5vDC from the 3.3vDC that comes from the controller?
Which would give the best results for input? Momentary switch vs turn knob vs touch screen (for color tone, intensity, and effects)
Is the Raspberry Pi4 8gb adequate to control the Dotstar array with several timer based functions running simultaneously with various manual triggers?
Each Dotstar says it needs 3bytes of ram. If I am running 144 LED's per Meter, for a total of 7m that is 1008 individual LED's. times 3 bytes per LED= 3KB (is this correct?)

User avatar
dastels
 
Posts: 15656
Joined: Tue Oct 20, 2015 3:22 pm

Re: Questions about powering Dotstars with a Raspberry Pi4

Post by dastels »

60A at 5v should be plenty. 60.5A would keep them happy at full bright white (if you deal with the heat generated) but that kind of use is extremely rare so you'd have plenty of excess capacity which will mean the power supply won't be stressed. Yes, with this dense of strips, I would have a power tap every meter.

From browsing the shop, only 1m lengths are available. More hassle maybe, but it makes it easy to connect power/ground each meter.

The AllPixel Power Tap Kit is a cute solution. That should work well.

Yes, you'll need a level shifter.

Best input method? That totally depends on what you want to do. I don't think there's a general "best".

A Pi4 should be fine. How much RAM you need depends on what you are running on it.

Yes, about 3k of ram to buffer the 7m strip.

It sounds like you may not have read https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-dot ... onnections or followed the links to the NeoPixel guide. Be sure you do. And do note the warning that you need to take care (and probably get an electrician involved) when dealing with that much current. Having the dotstars do a fire effect is cool, having the installation catch fire... not so much.

Dave

Locked
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.

Return to “Glowy things (LCD, LED, TFT, EL) purchased at Adafruit”