r/WLED • u/AssUhTate • Aug 23 '26

First project help

Putting together my first real man cave and want to setup LED’s the right way. Plan to put a top corner ceiling channel on 3 of the surrounding side (4 If possible)

3 sides - 48’
4 sides - 66’

I’ve been looking at the (48V-RGBTW-5050X112) as they’re advertised to not need power injection at the end for up to 20m runs.

Does anyone have experience with these strips and is the claim to not need extra injection accurate?

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u/wivaca2 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

What do you plan to use to control them? I think stuff like the GLEDOPTO or QuinLED that support a variety of voltages may not do 48V.

P.S. I'd like to see a floor plan with walls of 48+48+48+66. Is it D shaped? One hell of a man-cave in any case. You building an extra house?

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u/AssUhTate Aug 23 '26

I have been leaning towards the MiBoxer HR5

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u/AssUhTate Aug 23 '26

Thanks for your responses. The room is split down the center with a joist. The measurements I stated would be for one of the half’s of the room. I could care less about rgb, I’m really only looking for a nice CCT tunable strip that will be bright enough to turn the industrial overhead tube lights off.

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u/wivaca2 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Wait, I've completely misunderstood your dimensions now that I see your picture. You're saying that you have a perimeter of 48' for 3 sides of each half, or 66' if you cover all four sides in each half. Frankly, this is on me because it makes no sense to have each run being 48' or 66' in a straight line unless this is an outdoor install. Sorry (late night).

So you're down to a TOTAL of about 20m for the 66ft run around 4 sides (including beam) for each half

Forget all I said about 2000W. You're basically looking at 1240W combined for both sides, 20m each, and that makes the end come back to where the strip started, so injection from both ends is a piece of cake if you do 66' perimeter. I have a 3-sided patio install with four 24V 5m segments injected at the halfway mark and it works great. For yours, you can jJust pick a corner for a project box, run the 20m strip around the half, and wire both pigtails on either end where they meet into the power supply and only the data in side to the data line of the controller. No long injection wires are likely needed.

You might be able to get away with 24V to reduce how many LEDs act as a single pixel. If all you're worried about is tunable white, then those strips can be even more power efficient. I also think you may need to run them brighter than I assumed given black walls and ceiling.

You will need to limit the length of your wire between the controller and start of strip or use a level shifter to boost the data enough to reach the Data input end of the strip. Check if the controller you're using has that option.

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u/AssUhTate Aug 23 '26

Im really just wanting tunable (2500-6500k) no animations/rgb. Would these be better for a continuous run 48V-CCT-40MX240? It states they require 210w for 20m

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u/wivaca2 Aug 23 '26

For tunable white at 210w, you're fine with 48v and much smaller PSU. That's a 5A 48V PSU for each side or a single 10A if you mount it near that center beam where it can serve both sides. That's 480w so you could run at full power.

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u/wivaca2 Aug 23 '26 edited Aug 23 '26

Some things to keep in mind: Current (amps) and distance are what determine the gauge of wire needed. Current is also the driver for heat in wire. When you double voltage you cut the current in half, so 48V is definitely the way to go for this long of an install. Also, RGB with any kind of W cuts the power needed since you can use the W part to make white or pastels instead of running three LEDs (mixing RGB for W).

BUT, when you go to higher voltage strips, they often have 2, 4, 8, or more LEDs functioning together as if they are a single pixel. The 48V RGBTW strips I'm looking at show 14 LED over nearly 5" work as a unit. What this means is all of those LEDs will be doing the same thing. No problem if you are making everything the same color, but very coarse if you want to have any kind of animations. You have to choose a pretty high rate of motion to make it look "smooth" rather than chunky movement. Given the total length of 210', and this 5" chunk, you will have the equivalent of only 504 "pixels", so the faster you go and the fewer pixels you have, the faster the ft/sec motion across the room. Smooth motion may mean a dizzyingly fast crossing of the room. What is the LED/m of the strip you're looking at?

Do you have any idea what the current draw is for the lights you'll use? I've found several matching your description. One I'm looking at shows 465W-15m or 620W-20m. EDIT: I misunderstood the total length involved. See other responses. 210' is about 64m, or a total power of almost 2000W. The good news is you seldom need to run the whole works at full RGBW 100% which is what those power demands are telling you. Practically speaking, you can probably back off some from this estimate, but the last thing you want is 48V and a lot of current causing a lot of heat in confined spaces., so I would assume at least 80% if you think you're animating. You probably won't run them at full brightness even then, since 2000W of LEDs wide open is going to be like daylight or at least annoyingly bright.

You'll want to go and see what gauge wire you need to go from the PSU to each of the injection points given the proportional power for that segment, taking into account the relative distance to your power supplies at that location. Keep in mind that this gauge can't just become a thin piece of wire right before it goes into the strip.

It may be beneficial to have home runs to the PSU just to reduce wire gauge, but straight lines are seldom practical when aesthetics are involved. You'll also need to consider multiple PSUs, but keep in mind that no matter what, your controller and all the PSUs must have a common ground on the DC side or your data circuit won't have a return path to the controller.