Question

When talking about power supply, are led strips based on number of LEDs or total length of wire attached to controller? 5m of led strips with jumpers scattered thruout the same as 5m without jumpers? And what's the longest total run of led I can get away with on a 12v supply?  

Answer 1

Look at your power supply for max wattage. Then look at each LED strip and add the wattage and stay under the max wattage. So if you have 5 strips connected together and they are 7 watts each then that is 45 watts total.  

Comments

@fabozzi71343 ok, so what if I have 10 or 20 ft of no led jumper cable. doesn't that number still apply?  

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@pleinair it drops depending on length and gauge wire used. I don't have those numbers available. If you stay well under the max wattage you should be good.  

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@fabozzi71343, the drop in your wire should be negligible as long as you’re not running hundreds of feet.  

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Kinda what I figured. but I'm new to the led thing. I'm gonna wrap my outside bar and the total length around is 23ft. however the total led light space is closer to 18ft. figured I would just try the 12v system and see if it would be ok. Worst case I change the controller to a 24v?  

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@pleinair I used a 150W power supply to power 12 landscape lights about 120ft in my backyard without a problem