LEDgardener

Now that I spent a year obsessed with heatsinks, I thought it's time for me to start mapping out other areas. Yesterday I went to alibaba to look for little bits that could help in getting cleaner or better functioning builds, and thought it could be good to have a thread on this... both to get ideas on items, but also on where they could be obtained. On alibaba most suppliers would sell by thousands.

Here are a few things I found yesterday:

Powerchord:
https://jinda-china.en.alibaba.com/prod ... 3da0br4Qdq
Male power socket I imagine would fit the chord:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... 242dq9goXQ
Splitters could be used for cleaner wiring, and as an alternative for wago's:
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... yFLTMU&s=p
https://gzrmeeco.en.alibaba.com/product ... 5712LGIqEv
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... 58d0M6aYUw
https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/ ... 58d0M6aYUw

I’m constantly doing this on Digi-Key. Scrolling different categories just for little trinkets to add to my builds. I’ll def be contributing here. Iv longed for this thread.

Any information on connectors that could be used between the driver and strips? I'm thinking of putting some type of connector/ plug on the strips and drivers so its easy to reorganize parallel chains.

If the driver output side had a plug, I could have a variety of splitter cables to select based on what I'm putting together.

I see there is a lot of gear available with the regular dc charger plug. Is that a good choice? these lights are not waterproof, so there is no need for the connectors to be either.

Also I think that the power levels we are working with are so low that there might be a lot of different connectors that would work.

They should stick enough not to come off from a tiny nudge, but not so tight that they are hard to work with. Many of the waterproof connectors have a kind of screw on cover. I'd concider that hard to work with, if I was in an uncomfortable position trying to connect 10s of strips for sidelighting....

With connecting and disconnecting different configurations and what your describing is a bulkhead in the hydraulic world or a panel mount plugs in the electrical. Its an array of hyd/elect connections that mount on a flat surface for plugging in connectors and are labelled for easy reference to keep the tangle in order. In electrical you'd want a high voltage, single pole panel mount connector - first glance these are expensive, but not sure what the best options are for plugs.

Hydraulic equivalent:
https://absolutecontrol.com/wp-content/ ... s-16-9.jpg

Extremely expensive units:
https://www.mouser.com/ds/2/18/AldenHig ... 947342.pdf

Banana plugs if you keep below 30V, some barrel plugs up to 48V

Hard to beat Molex for price (think computer)

I have always been a fan of Anderson connectors for DC, but like most connectors they only become cheap when you buy them 1000 at a time.

I just realized that by using connectors with more pins, I could use a single set of wires that would send different power levels to different types of strips? Using active cooling I could also use the same wire to power fans?

These have worked well for me, I also got some 3 pin so I could ground the fixture

Re: banana plugs: don't. They plugs are safe, but you're already using a noisy power supply. Banana plugs pick up RFI readily, both loading they power supply more, possibly even cause oscillating in some cases, and will give worse ripple to the LEDs themselves. On an analog scope, you can see AM interference those things pick up with ease, and it can get to looking pretty ugly. Speakers more or less give their output transistors and the voice coil an effect analogous to physical inertia, and most of the nastiness just burns up.

For an easy to find and use connector, SpeakOn and clones, along with XLR, may be good choices. Companies that rate their XLRs for current generally spec 5A (I don't know off hand if there's a standard for it), and I've seen some medical and survey equipment using them for power. Not super cheap, but easy to panel mount to 1U cases, always available, and not too expensive. In a similar vein, good old DIN connectors are still widely available, and give you the option of more pins. All of these would be very durable, possibly to the point of overkill, even cheap Chinese ones.

unkle_psycho wrote: ↑

Sun Apr 21, 2019 7:39 am

I just realized that by using connectors with more pins, I could use a single set of wires that would send different power levels to different types of strips? Using active cooling I could also use the same wire to power fans?

Yes. But, at some point, it may be better to start using conduit and raceway to group cables, rather than add more and more lines to one connector, especially given that real current us involved.

If you have enough to control, you may want to consider changing your hierarchy, too, and using some IoT, with more local driving and control. With Sonoffs and Shelleys out there, and Home Assistant's feature set and maturity (and Node Red's), you can do a lot of involved things with zero coding, now. If you want easy coding, for more localized decision making, NodeMCU's firmware or MicroPython make that easier than ever. A big power hub may be a bit much, if you can right-size clusters of distributed power supplies, while centrally controlling them with software.