Is there a way to set the milliamp cap for each pin? I only want to limit power consumption on two pins instead of globally.
I’ve never heard of a way to do that. There may be some really techy way though.
Can you explained a bit more about the situation you’re trying to prevent?
Yeah, I have 3 different numbers of LEDs on 4 different pins, 54, 120, 120 and 66 on pins 6, 7, 8 and 9. I have buck converters on all 4 strips that drop 12 volts down to 5 volts, (this whole system is in a car). When all the LEDs are on white on full brightness the buck converters on pins 7 and 8 (120 LEDs) shut off because they hit the current limiter that’s built into the buck converters. Now that I think about it I might just put two of the buck converters in parallel for each 120 LED strip because even if I do figure out a way to limit the current draw for just 2 of 4 pins, they’ll be dimmer than the others and I don’t want them to be noticeably different.
You might want to check if it’s ok to put them in parallel. Alternately you could split the longer strips in two on their power feeds and use a second buck for the second half.
I’m no electrical engineer, but is there a reason it wouldn’t work to put two or more in parallel?
Yeah it doesn’t work. Just tried it… looks like everything will have to be dimmer when it’s on full brightness white…
I’m no EE either, but I don’t think you want to put them in parallel. Or at least it’s not the best practice.
Some other reading sounds like you can put two in parallel if they are synchronized.
Oh I see. That all makes sense. Well darn looks like I’ll just set the global current limit to an appropriate value. Thanks!
@Kyle_Halvorson You need to manage your power usage in software. I believe FastLED has some power management built in, read up on it. Alternatively you need to build in some active test for how much power you want to pump out