I'm having a power issue with my LED tail.

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I’m having a power issue with my LED tail.

I’ve got it running on an RC car battery, going through a power conditioner then an on/off switch. After that, the power splits in two – to the board, and to the LEDs.

It boots up beautifully, and runs beautifully if the board is plugged in to (and therefore powered by) my USB cable (or an auxiliary battery). But if I try to run the LEDs at more than about 1/3 brightness, they suck all the power up and the board goes dim and then dead. I can see the little Arduino onboard LED struggling mightily and dimming when the brighter modes come on, and of course as soon as the LEDs suck up too much power, the animation freezes.

I am using somewhere around 100 of these WS2801 lights: http://www.ebay.com/itm/111125093675?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

And I have around 25-30 neopixels as well.

Is there some way I can coerce the battery to give more juice to the board? Resistors? I don’t know. This seems like a basic electronics question but I chose acting instead, in high school…

Battery I’m using:

http://www.all-battery.com/111volt-2200mah25cli-polylipobatterypack-2.aspx

Power conditioner:

Thanks for any advice!!

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Check out the video starting at 2:30, then wait till the 3:00 mark. Your waterproofing must be spectacular if your submerging these type of batteries in water. BE CAREFUL!

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It’s inside a sealed otter box, with a waterproof rating of 100M. The only “hole” in the box is a navy-seal-grade cable gland. Provided I get the box closed right, that thing’s not leaking. I also have a fuse coming right off the battery in case anything untoward happens. I did a lot of research and thinking before I chose LiPo… and I suppose I just like to live dangerously maybe.

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I also looked at your UBEC, it says it routes even amount of current to both output leads. So, there is a possibility that it’s not working quite right?..If you’re using an Arduino certified board, then you can safely put 12v into those guys directly from the battery. The UBEC can then be used to supply the LED’s only.

BTW a fuse won’t help the battery from shorting out if water gets into the compartment.

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I got it working … it seems my wires are too skinny, but doing some doubling up and rewiring fixed the problem. YAY

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Great news, you know that this post didn’t make it to the main LED page?!? I can only see it in my main feed, weird. Maybe that’s why no one else has commented on it…