Manufacture stated to run 12v 5 amp per 5m led. Im going to be running 7.5 meter, which is using 1 set plus half another. From research its suggested to go to 24volt power supply. Question 1 is can I connect the 2.5 m strip to end of the 5m without any real issue and push current that far or do I need to wire the 2nd strip back to the power supply? This is going down a 24 foot walk in closest so dont really want to run 2nd set of wires back. From my calculations a 24v 7.5a should supply this 5630 dual row led 120 led p meter. Is there any flaws in the above logic, or can I safely run a higher v power supply. I want to be able to leave these one all time if I chose to.
Electronic – Powering LED Strips greater than 5 Meters long
led strip
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I'm going to be wiring the rows up snake style and dual feeding to keep brightness consistent across the array.
If Dual Feeding is what I think it means, you already know what to do.
Feed the 5v to each 106cm section individually or in pairs. Don't chain the power through the entire 17m length. Sure, this means 8 or 16 sets of 5v and Gnd cables, but with each only carrying 2A or 4A over a small length, heat/current/resistance issues go away. Same reason you only see 18 AWG wire in ATX Power Supplies. Instead of a single 10AWG 12v Cable, it uses 8 or 12 18AWG wires to carry the same current.
You would keep the data cable the same. Just make sure to tie the grounds together.
Actually, pretty much how the datasheet for the Sparkfun item you linked to already has it, for a snake layout.
For 1M strips (106cm = 1.06M) the voltage drop would be insignificant.
The chip you linked has daisy chain facilities where, in effect it becomes one long shift register thus buffering the inputs from the MCU and outputting the serial data and clock to the next chip: -
As with anything like this, read the data sheet and look at the pin-out of the chip. The clues are there on page 1.
Best Answer
Without having extremely detailed specifications of the LED strip and what you consider to be acceptable the answer cannot be determined.
Connect it to the end and see if it gives acceptable performance, I would expect that it will. if it does not (light too dim at the far end) you can then add a cable from the junction, (or move the power suppply to the junction) etc.. use a 12V power supply capable of 7.5A pr more, there's no simple way to use 24V with that setup.
ideally you should connect power to the strip at several points.
eg: by running a cable parallel with the strip
You may find that it's possible to drill a series of holes in the ceiling and fish the supply cable through them, and then fix the led strip such that it conceals the holes