Powering 4 meters of NeoPixel 30 strip

[alexlesh]

Hi all,

I am working on lighting a Burning Man bicycle using 4 meters of NeoPixel 30 strip. I understand that the average consumption of the strip should be about 2.4 Amps.
In order to be able to ride around for a few hours, I bought a 12V 7Ah lead-acid battery. (12V * 7Ah = 84Wa -> 16.8Ah @ 5V -> 7 hours of light-up fun).
My question is what kind of converter would you recommend to get the power source from 12V to 5V for the light strip and Arduino? I saw a lot of 3A converters out there, but I would like to be able to have peak usage above 3A.

This looks like a good bet: http://www.amazon.com/DROK-Converter-Re ... nverter+4a
Any advice?

Thanks,
Sasha

[Franklin97355]

https://www.adafruit.com/products/1385 5v 3a but not in stock but what you are looking for is a switching converter. If we don't have them check SparkFun or pololu

[alexlesh]

For 4 meters, wouldn't I need to occasionally supply more that 3A of current?

[adafruit_support_bill]

The max current draw (all pixels full intensity white) would be a little over 7A. Many applications never exceed 1/2 of the theoretical max.
With 4 meters, you will want to feed power to multiple points anyhow to limit the voltage drop. You could use multiple small converters such as the UBEC and feed sections of the strip separately.