HyperHDR: prepare for building & buying components, step 2: power supply

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Guide for building your own ambient system:

Calculating wattage for out power supply

For every meter of: 

- WS2801 (32leds/meter) you will be need 9.6 watts/meter of power supply

- SK6812/WS2812b (30 leds/meter) you will be need  9 watts/meter of power supply

- SK6812/WS2812b (60 leds/meter) you will be need  18 watts/meter of power supply

- SK6812/WS2812b (144 leds/meter) you will be need 44 watts/meter of power supply

That's the upper limit. Probably with TV ambient light you won't need that much but it's better to be safe.

One golden rule: although you can try to buy other components directly from China that's not the case with power supplies. Just don't repeat my mistakes searching them on Aliexpress. Their quality and stability are pathetic and they aren't cheap. Let's say that Mean Well or Delta brand is pure minimum for our purpose.

Here is a picture of one of Mean Well (in middle) along side two of my failures from Aliexpress.



Currently I use Mean Well RS-75-5. I'm quite happy with it. Only when led strip is very dimmed and the power usage is low it starts to buzz a little.


Probably you wonder if you can use that 5V power supply to supply both led strip and Raspberry Pi? 

Yes, you can but it's not a good solution. I've experience a lot of problems with the voltage stability on Raspberry Pi and it caused really strange situations. "Under voltage detected" in Raspberry Pi's log is just one of non-dangerous ones but it's a sign of troubles coming....



It's much better to provide separate power supply for Raspberry Pi:




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