I know it doesn’t quiet fit, but I thought you guys had the best experience with this. How would you connect the Arduino and a 5V 60 LEDs strip to the same power supply? How much current would you use? I’m not that much of a hardware guy so any advice would be appreciated. 
The hookup is basically like this: http://imgur.com/UbrnTBR
Best way to think about it is that you’re mostly delivering power to the LED strip, and that the Arduino is tapping a little bit of the power along the way.
As for current, I use “50 milliamps per pixel” as a generally safe upper limit if you’re going to be doing color effects. If you’re going to be using the strips in all-on-pure-white mode for more than a second or two every now and then, use “60 milliamps per pixel”. In practice, most bright and colorful effects and animations use only half that, about 25-30ma/px.
If you estimate 60 millimamps/pixel, and you have 60 pixels, that’s 3600ma, or 3.6 amps. That’s for full-on-white-all-the-time, which is not what most people do.
If you make a more typical estimate of 30ma / pixel, which is more like what yore likely to draw with bright colorful animations, and you have 60 pixels, that’s 1800ma, or 1.8 amps. That amount of current can easily be supplied by an iPad wall charger; they’re 2.1 amps.
If you have more than a hundred LEDs or so, you may also want to connect + and - power to the “far end” of the LED strip as well as the “near end”.
Other folks want to chime in here?
so then I would run it at 5V? But as far as I understand this “The board can operate on an external supply of 6 to 20 volts.”(Arduino.cc) it needs more than 5V. Which I don’t really understand as the Arduino runs fine on USB which also does ‘just’ have 5V.
I want to get a new one which will not have a usb connector so I need use either VIN or the power jack. those do 5V for sure? So I’d get any power supply unit with 5V ~5A?
"The board can be supplied with power either from the DC power jack (7 - 12V), the USB connector (5V), or the VIN pin of the board (7-12V). "
I just want to make sure I don’t get the wrong one
Okay. I currently have an arduino uno R3 and a 5V 60 rgb addressable LED strip. Atm, I have one USB power supply for the arduino and another one for the LEDs but I want to have both on the same one. More importantly, the power supply I use for my leds only offers half the current I need. So I would like to now If there is a possibility to hook up both on a 5V power supply.
I think you got me wrong there. I’m looking for an alternative way for having both, the Uno and my LEDS, on the same power supply. I don’t like that I currently have two of those.(one for the LEDs, one for the Uno).
Means that a normal 5V power supply draws regulated 5V?
I run multiple AVRs and LED strings off of computer power supplies. Considering that the 5V rails on some of them can provide upwards up 30-40 amps (I’ve seen as high as 70 amps), that’s several strings lit up at the same time. The AVR runs on very very little power.
A power SUPPLY doesn’t draw anything on itself, it provides power. Your attached devices will draw from it.
Oh, sorry Ashley, that was just a lack of English knowledge relating this topic. I’m German and don’t know all the professional words, yet.
If you are using something other than a USB connection to power your Arduino, then you need something in the 7V-12V range (like a 9V battery.) The reason for that is that the onboard regulator will need more power to be able to regulate it down to 5V. This applies to the VIN pin as well as that too goes straight to the regulator (check the schematic if you don’t understand this.) You can not supply straight 5V to the regulator and expect to get 5V back, that just doesn’t work.
In my case, I use Arduino clones, AVRs mounted on breadboards, where I can supply 5V directly to the AVR and not deal with a regulator. In that setup, I use a single power supply and I split the 5V rail into two wires, one going to the AVR and the other to the LED string.
@Benjamin_Greenwald While for all intents and purposes connecting power to the 5V+ pin would work, I strongly discourage that. There is no reverse protection on the regulator and if someone messed up and connects a higher voltage, they can damage the regulator. I’d rather people learn to only use the VIN pin for Voltage IN as opposed to the other pins. Break the habit early, teach people the right way.
Absolutely agree. It is certainly possible to use a single 5V supply to get what he’s after. I’m merely pointing out that it’s not necessarily safe practice. At least, not on a genuine Arduino board. In a different setup, like what I do, it’ll be just fine.
On the other hand, using anything higher to power the board, will require a separate regulator to drop it back down to 5V for the strips themselves … Six of this or half dozen of that.
That all did make sense, thank you so far, though I’m slightly confused on whether you consider it safe to have a regulated power supply(which all of the newer ones should) on a 5V pin or not. If NOT, how would you do it? Having 10V and a resistor or 5V ans a step-up-something 
?
I personally would not, however that does not mean you can’t do that. You absolutely can, and the board will run. My point was, if people get used to doing that and one day mistakenly connect say 12V to that pin, they will absolutely fry the board.
So to you I will say, if you have a regulated 5V supply, then sure go ahead split it into two wires with one connected to the 5V+ pin and the other to the LED strip. Program the strip, sit back and have a drink.
That’s exactly what I wanted to hear 
thank you! I understand your point and will definitely take care here. If I’ll do get into trouble again, I think breaking an arduino is enough of a lesson.