rednosetbird Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Hi all, its been a little bit... Been working to much!! I am going to dip into the RGB world this year. I have been trying to do some research on this. The only thing I have to say is wow... what route to go. I will be going with the dumb RGB for this year for around the out line of my house. I bought the CMB- 128 from LOR last year. I have a lot of long runs that are over the 16' of what the ribbons are. I have started to look into injecting power into the LEDS. I am looking for people that have done this and what would be the best way. I was thinking of adding power supply's at the ends of the runs some of them at the most are 29'. Would this be best practice and price affective? Also how much power does the light o rama RGB dumb strips use to determine the size of the power supply? Can you inject to much power? The only thing I am lost with is, if you are coming with 12 volts from the board and the 12 volts from the other side from a transformer... is that still 12 volts in the strip? I cant fine anything on this. Thanks, Bill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scubado Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 If you have two strips of 16' ribbon for a 32' run, connect your power in the middle where the two ribbons would meet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 I have both dumb strips and smart strips that are long enough that power injection is used. In my planter I have about 30 feet of smart strip that have power fed from the two ends. It was just convenient for me to do it this way because of existing conduit runs. Along my roses, I have smart strips that are getting power from one end and also about 2/3 along the strip. Again, it was done that way because it was convenient due to where I already had conduit. Lastly I have five or six meters of dumb strip on my tree rings. Even though it was not really required, all three of those are fed from both ends. That was easy since the two ends of each strip were right next to each other. The short answer is do what is convenient in each case. As for your 12V question, I'm not sure what you are asking. I don't know what transformer you are talking about. On either smart or dumb strips, there is no transformer between the controller and the strips. Most strips are either 5V or 12V. If you give it too much voltage, you let the magic blue smoke out and it no longer works; if you give too low a voltage, either nothing happens (no light or damage), or they light very dim. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rednosetbird Posted March 2, 2015 Author Share Posted March 2, 2015 This is what I should of said, if your supplying power from your controller "CMB-24" and then your injecting power from another power supply from the other end. Would this make 24 volts? I am using 12 volt strips. I hope this makes some sense. OK OK, now I hope I am not over thinking this! Do you just connect the clock and the data in the middle and not the + and the - ? then feed at each end with the + and - ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darryl Lambert Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 Dumb strips do not have a clock or data line. They are for smart strips & you would connect the data,clock,& - . The + should not be continuous on the strip when using 2 or more power supplies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 No, it does not add up like that. I'm going to give you a longer answer when I'm not doing this from my phone. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sax Posted March 2, 2015 Share Posted March 2, 2015 (edited) Dumb rgb is very forgiving. You do not have to inject power as much as if you had smart rgb.I have not tested dumb strips. I have tested dumb bullets. They are very similar to power loss though so they should be similar results.My bullets are 4" apart and use 12 Vdc. I tested 100 bullets...so this would be on a string of lights 400" long. 400" is about 33' long.I go from the LOR cmb-24 (24 is for the number of channels) to the bullets using standard extension cables (18 awg) for 75'. No issues.I put an additional 100 bullets on the end. No issues.Now, on smart rgb, I am not able to go 50 bulbs without an issue. This is where you can either add power injection or run a new strip from the controller. But your not looking at smart.Dumb rgb uses 4 wires. And each wire carries the common, red, green, blue voltages. So I don't even know how you could add a second power supply. You have to have the same signal on the beginning of the strip as you do on the end of the strip. This is how the color is controlled...different voltages on each of the red green and blue wires. So the only thing you could possibly do is put the exact same wires you have have the beginning on the back end.If it were my display, I would get the required items and test. I would test the exact lengths before placing on the house. Take the longest length, add the longest extensions you plan to use, and test with only 1 power supply. See if it works. If not then you can run a second strip off the exact controller output to a second strip....you could use another channel. But you can't really power inject in the same way as smart.Lastly, if you connect 2 12 volt dc power supplies together you will not get 24vdc. You will get 12 Vdc. Edited March 2, 2015 by sax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rednosetbird Posted March 4, 2015 Author Share Posted March 4, 2015 Thanks everyone its so much more clear to me! The more reading I was doing the more I was getting lost! So bottom line is for me using the dumb RGB strips is to test, test and test on what will work best for that situation. Could someone clarify the power injection for me for dumb strips. It sounds like it cant be done with dumb strips of what I am understanding. Thanks, Bill Krueger Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lowepg Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 There's a great rgb primer on the aussie sight for pixels and rgb... I dont have the exact link, but start here- TONS of great info. I was all set to do a lot with dumb rgbs. but for several reasons changed gears and moved to smart pixels right from the get-go... http://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/Main_Page Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
George Simmons Posted March 4, 2015 Share Posted March 4, 2015 I was all set to do a lot with dumb rgbs. but for several reasons changed gears and moved to smart pixels right from the get-go... I started with smart pixels in 2009 and haven't gotten around to dumb RGB until this year ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Little_b Posted March 5, 2015 Share Posted March 5, 2015 (edited) You can inject power on RGB Dumb Strips. You just need to use an RGB Amplifier/Data Repeater. This is one I've tried, but ended up not using long term. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0081CZJGO/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Edited March 5, 2015 by Little_b Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rednosetbird Posted March 9, 2015 Author Share Posted March 9, 2015 Cant wait to get back outside this week! going to start measuring out my longest lengths and start testing! Thanks everyone! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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