Power Suppy Bridging for Pixels Question

[Obejohnknobe]

I  am  running a couple of Pixie 16s (mega tree and porch posts) with a power requirement barely exceeding the wattage and current of 2 power supplies (12vdc and 5 vdc).  Instead of trying to do inject power on the pixels themselves (extra wire and time) has anyone tried to bridge an extra power supply on each power supply to augment wattage and current that powers the Pixie 16s?  This works for batteries but am not sure it would work for power supplies.  I have tried this will small power supplies and it has worked (testing small motors) but they were small wattage and current.

[k6ccc]

It will probably work, but is not recommended.  The issue is that unless the two power supplies are designed for bridged operation, they will not share the load evenly unless they are EXACTLY the same voltage (and that never changes on either supply).  The result is that one supply kills itself trying to carry the load and the other supply does almost nothing - at least until the one carrying the load fails.

The other thing to keep in mind is the current rating of both the individual outputs on the Pixie and the overall current limit for the board.  In the case of the Pixie 16, that is 32 amps for each bank and 64 amps for the entire board.  Presumably that means 4 amps per string (if all the strings are the same and therefore expected to draw the same amount of power), but that was not in the specs.

Normally when power injection is used, the added current does not pass through the pixel controller, avoiding the board current limitation.

The last thing to consider is that if the strings are long, you will need to inject power in order to keep the voltage up at the far end of the string.

 

[Obejohnknobe]

I figured that was the case since I could not find anything on bridging the power supplies for added current and wattage.  Oh well, back to adding the injection lines.......