Electrical – Multiple Power Supplies Powering Long LED Strip – Proper Way to Ground

groundled strippower supply

Diagram

Please refer to the above diagram.

The 2 power supplies are each placed in the opposite end of the led strip.

I will be connecting the signal ground and the power ground just before it connects to the led strip to reduce noise.

But do I need to tie the grounds of the 2 power supplies? I searched around and it seems I do indeed need to until I came across this thread:

Can identical DC power supplies with common ground produce varying voltage on same circuit?

RoyC said, "The better one has the horizontal ground line just below the supplies removed and the ground from each extra supply connected directly to the strip it is driving as well as the ground from the driver board".

I may have mistaken the meaning of his statement but does that mean I have to connect the grounds of the 2 power supplies right before the load and not right after the power source as seen by the orange line drawn in the diagram?

But the length between the start and the end of the strip is around 13M and the distance between each strip is different (strip 1 and strip 2 distance is around 11M while strip 2 to strip 3 is 1M). Does that change anything?

Best Answer

There is no need to tie ground as per the orange line, in fact it can be detrimental as you are effectively creating a long ground loop.

To understand exactly what is going on you should design and simulate your circuit with small resistors on both ground and power between each LED, like others have suggested.

Edit after changes to question 22/7:

I would recommend you connect the system as follows:

Recommendation