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patrickjahns / esp_rgbww_controller

Custom Board to control RGB + WW channels via Wifi utziling ESP8266
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High Amperage use #6

Open borodamd opened 3 years ago

borodamd commented 3 years ago

Hi. You made an great scheme, but i want to put about 20m strip to this controller. It will take about 25 ampers, but as i understand, maximum load is 4a.

What i need to change in this scheme to use this load? Thanks

pljakobs commented 3 years ago

hey @borodamd, I have created a newer version of this board here https://github.com/pljakobs/esp_rgbww_controller/tree/Feature-externalGPIO-pmue. This isn't optimized for high currents, and I would in general not advise you to plan for high currents. Why? because the strips are usually not designed for such high currents. I'm currently running a strip that is about 9m long at, at full RGBW load, draws about 6.5A, but at that load, you can already see a clear discoloration at the far end. If you need to provide 20m, I would suggest to break that down into four strips of 5m ea. There is a refactored firmware available that provides mqtt based synchronization between multiple controllers, see here https://github.com/verybadsoldier/esp_rgbww_firmware/wiki

I think such a setup would give you more reliability and flexibility. Also, I would suggest to consider running 24V strips (six per LED group rather than three) which will half your current requirement and make the whole design a lot more easy. You might then get away with two controllers.

pj

borodamd commented 3 years ago

Thanks for advices. I already use strips 24v, but put separate RGB and CWW strips. But put line to separate controllers and sync them is good point. Also i planning to make firmware at ESPHome. It will be more flexible and sync from it will not be a problem.

Thanks again