Hi All, Love this forum, I am a newbie, that just built 3 of the 16 channel
kits. my question is fairly simple.
On my two 20A supply lines coming in, can I just run jumper wires to the other 2 boards from the first board?
all my equipment will be together in one large box and I will plan for expansion each
year. I will have two dedicated 20A circuits, and want to make sure I can do this and don't have to run separate power cords from each card and plug each into a separate circuit, I would wonder how they would be able to do hundreds of channels and all those cards if this were the case?
and if so, what would be the limit of the line in? 3, 4, 5 cards. or how would i figure this out. or can I enlarge the breaker on my new circuits to a higher amperage to allow for expansion.
What type of load (usage) do you plan on having on these 3 controllers? You would be very limited only using 2 20amp circuits, unless you have a small display or all LED's.
It all depends on your display. How many lights you are running and the amperage requirements of each channel and board.
Is it doable? Yes, BUT you are limited by the bottleneck of the one input line feeding 3 controllers. Doing it this way you can only pull the maximum amperage allowed by the gauge of input wire you run from the first board to the breaker. If you're running 1 LED strand per channel, then you'd likely be OK, add up you amperage requirements first, then work backwards from each channel to the breaker to make sure you are supplying enough power.
There is a lot of discussion on these forums about power requirements, it takes a lot of learning to get it figured out for those of us that are not extremely familiar with electricity and wiring limits.
What I've figured is treat your wiring kind of like a water line, only so much water can flow through certain size pipes at a time. If you need more water, you need another pipe from the main because putting a "T" on a small pipe does not increase the amount of flow, it only diverts what's available through that small pipe.
it is a pretty small display on my business roof
48 channels only around 6000 lights and no more than 2 strands of 100 on any 1 channel. I am putting in a separate circuit in the breaker box and running a dedicated line to the roof for the display, so that is what I am getting at.
Should I use 3 circuits for the 3 boards?
I find it hard to believe that some of these guys working on a home project with a few hundred channels can dedicate so many circuits to this. this is the pint of my confusion.
I want to do it right, from the beginning, how would you suggest the connections be made if it was your setup?
Ron Vinyard wrote: 48 channels only around 6000 lights and no more than 2 strands of 100 on any 1 channel.
What kind of strands? C9, C7, Mini, LED? Look at the sticker on the strand if it's still there and find out how many amps each strand uses. Then add it up.
Many, if not most people here do have a number of dedicated circuits just for their controllers. I think even a few have had the Power company bring in a 2nd line from the street with a full panel (not just a sub panel) to power thier controllers.
This is our 1st year using 3 LOR controllers, and we added 4 dedicated 20 amp circuits, based on our load this year, and will add more as needed.
To answer your question as far as what you should do, as posted above, figure out what your load will be, and work from there.
Thanks guys, that makes perfect sense,
I did the math and I am running 9.9 amps on on card and 10.8 and 10.05 on the other 2.
so for this year do you think I can run the 2 -20A circuits and chain them together
or would you put each on a separate circuit?
then I can plan to upgrade the electric for next year.
I would run one or two more now and save money by not having to upgrade next year. If you run 12-3 instead of 12-2 you get one extra circuit if the distance is not to far. Each plug would then become two circuits not one. A duplex plug would be two separate circuits not just one plug. I hope that is not too confusing.
shfr26 wrote: I would run one or two more now and save money by not having to upgrade next year. If you run 12-3 instead of 12-2 you get one extra circuit if the distance is not to far. Each plug would then become two circuits not one. A duplex plug would be two separate circuits not just one plug. I hope that is not too confusing.
If you take this approach then the breakers in your panel MUST be mechanically linked together.
I would recommend you run a minimum of 3 circuits and have each controller plugged into it's own circuit/plug. You can use jumpers and tie both sides of the controller together.
As for you original question yes you can. I have 2 enclosures with 2 controllers in each. These boxes only have on power cord. The other side of the coin is these boxes are on my megatree and then entire mega tree is using LED lights. The projected load for this year on the mega tree total is a little over 3 amps for 9600 lights.
Were do you get your metal boxes like that. I have looked at hd/lowes and can't find any that i can get two controlers in like that. The only thing i could think of is getting a power panel box like a 8/16 lug box or a 12/24 100amp and strip out the guts but what a waste of money. As each pannel box cost about 25 to 50 dollars.
The metal box in that photo I purchased for 15 or 20 each from a guy on PC that had lots left over from a job he purchased them for. He worked as an electrician. Anyway at the time I purchased 4 of them. Yeah me.!
