Parallel LED lighting with Arduino.

Development Boards Arduino
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I have a big project but having technical difficulties and have only bought two 5m reels of WS2812B.

I want to expand this project but need to overcome some hurdles before purchasing more equipment.

I’m having trouble with running multiple LED strips WS2812B, to one Arduino uno board.

  1. How do you control all the LED strips from one board; if I have about 3 dozen strips with approximately 70 LED’s per strip?

At this time, I presently have four strips of 70 leds each that I cut out but trying to jut get two running in parallel first.

  1. Want the led strips to run in parallel, instead of sequentially?

I see a lot of tutorial’s blinking one led at a time in sequential order, that’s not what I want.

Will I need a different board or is this possible on Arduino’s?

  1. How to power just two strips at the same time with just the one power source and one Arduino.

  2. And how do I get the data of the Arduino to multiple strips and power those strips simultaneously?

For example, I want one led light strip to run a routine, at the same time as another led strip, so they are running in parallel & not waiting for the other one to finish.

I want to use this code for both strips at the same time on one Arduino, is it possible?

https://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware/a … MeteorRain

Right now, I just have four strips laid out but I plan on making a platform with about 3 dozen strips. However, they will not all be lighting up all at the same time but at random intervals. With that said, I was thinking I could get away with one Arduino and one 5v 50w power supply brick.

I see someone like this made multiple strips run at the same time, so similar idea:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xUsO9YUFjE

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  1. How do you control all the LED strips from one board; if I have about 3 dozen strips with approximately 70 LED’s per strip?

At this time, I presently have four strips of 70 leds each that I cut out but trying to jut get two running in parallel first.

To run two (or more) strips in parallel just connect the data pins at the beginning of each strip together and connect that to your Arduino. Both strips will then look identical while running

  1. Want the led strips to run in parallel, instead of sequentially?

I see a lot of tutorial’s blinking one led at a time in sequential order, that’s not what I want.

Will I need a different board or is this possible on Arduino’s?

If you’re running sequentially, you’d connect the data out from the first strip to the data in of the second making a single long strip. What ever you program the first strip to do, the second strip will copy the first if you have both data in’s connected together at the beginning of the strip. This doesn’t allow you to run different programs on each strip later on though since they are hard wired together.

  1. How to power just two strips at the same time with just the one power source and one Arduino.

You will need to determine how much power you need first. Worst case, you will need 60mA per LED if you light them up full brightness and white. 2 strips X 70 LEDs per strip x 60mA = 8400mA. (8.4 amps) It’s a good idea to build in a safety margin so I’d go with a 10 amp power supply for 2 strips. The Arduino only needs a little bit of power and can be powered from the same supply as your strips.

  1. And how do I get the data of the Arduino to multiple strips and power those strips simultaneously?

If all strips all supposed to do the same thing, just connect the data in pins together and then connect that to your Arduino.

For example, I want one led light strip to run a routine, at the same time as another led strip, so they are running in parallel & not waiting for the other one to finish.

That might get tricky on an Arduino since an Arduino can only run one loop of code at a time. You could get creative with your code so that it does the computations for both strips and then sends data out too them on separate pins updating the strips alternately. It would slow down your updates, but would enable you to send different ‘programs’ to each strip. I don’t know how the libraries that run these strips handle this, you may need to modify the libraries or write your own to make it work. It’s possible you might find things run too slowly if you connect enough strips together.

Right now, I just have four strips laid out but I plan on making a platform with about 3 dozen strips. However, they will not all be lighting up all at the same time but at random intervals. With that said, I was thinking I could get away with one Arduino and one 5v 50w power supply brick.

As long as you can ensure that you keep a small enough number of LEDs lit at any given time, this should work, but keep in mind if something goes wrong and a strip misbehaves, you could potentially overload your power supply. It might be safer to use multiple power supplies each driving a few strips so that if something malfunctions, you don’t end up overloading a single supply.

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@martinmachine99 Your led strips have 3 wires running the length of the strip? 0v, +5, Data In (at one end), Data out at the other end? And you can program each LED individually? I’ve used one of these strips, never had the luxury of so many. Each led has a 64 bit address, the protocol is called One Wire. When the driver starts it learns how many leds there are. I guess it keeps the array of addresses in numerical order. I don’t know if there’s a limit to how many you can connect, or if the transmission time gets big enough to be seen as delay. You want two strips (or more) to do the same thing? You have to program nos 0…69 to do something, and 70…139 to do the same.