Power 10 meters LED stripes

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Hi,

I'd buy this product ( Digital RGB LED Weatherproof Strip 32 LED - (1m)) in a single strip of 10 meters (it´s about this art instalation:
http://murmur.me/category/gallery-2 )

> The 5V DC power supply does enough to light the 10 meters LED stripes?
> Could you prepare by attaching two 5m LED strips ?

Thanks by advance,

Stephane

[adafruit_support_rick]

The strips come in 5-meter reels, so you would have to buy two reels to get 10 meters.

We have a tutorial which answers questions about power:
http://learn.adafruit.com/digital-led-strip

Briefly, you would probably want two 5V 10A power supplies. Each is enough to drive 5 meters.

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Thanks for your reply Rick,
Ok this is what I thought ... I need my power to be grouped. That is my problem.

Do you think this can work (link is broken) :
"If the 10 Amp power supply isn’t large enough for your project, a slightly modified ATX computer power supply can provide 30 Amps to power upwards of 500 pixels!"

All my power systeme must be in the black box (see picture below) :
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96363924@N ... 3626585023

And more pictures here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/96363924@N ... 626585023/

Thanks for your help,

[adafruit_support_rick]

Well, you can run 5M wires from the second 10A supply to the second strip.
Or you can use a 30A ATX supply, as suggested.
You might be able to wire two 10A supplies in parallel - I don't know if that's recommended, so I'l have to check.

[adafruit_support_bill]

Don't wire the power supplies in parallel. One will end up doing all the work. Better to split up the load - 5 meters per power supply. Connect all the grounds together, but keep the +5v lines separate.

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Thanks for your reply Bill,
what do you mean by :

One will end up doing all the work

?
If I understand correctly, it would work with a single 10A supplies but even better with two (5 meters per power supply).

Thanks so much for your reply, I will proceed with the order.

[adafruit_support_bill]

If you wire up both in parallel, each will be trying to regulate the voltage to 5v. Except that there are always some small variations in manufacturing, so one may be trying to regulate to 4.9999v and the other one is looking for 5.0001v. So the 5.0001v regulator will be working hard to keep the output at 5.0001v while the 4.9999v regulator will be coasting along thinking it has nothing to do.

So it is better to have each one controlling half the load, with no connection between the 5v outputs. You still need to connect all the ground wires together so that you have a common ground reference for the control signals.

[adafruit_support_rick]

If I understand correctly, it would work with a single 10A supplies but even better with two (5 meters per power supply).

No, that isn't what he meant. For full brightness, 10A is not enough for the full 10M.

If you ran at reduced brightness, or if you only used one of R, G, or B at a time, then 10A might be enough.

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Thank you both once again.