re: Permanently installed LED "Christmas" lights.

I’ve got a 117 run of c9 (30mm) and a 150 node run of 12mm. Neither are injected. I don’t run the brightest white and have no desire to for my setup. Even when playing and looking at the brightest white, I can’t tell on the 117 strand. On the 150, there is a very slight dimming vs 150 from 1.
I limit my total brightness for all of this to 8A (100w roughly), and it’s plenty bright. Probably more noticeable if I “took the brakes off,” but I see no need to.


For my 400 node run that’s upcoming, I’ll put power after 150 and at the end, probably, but I will see how it looks with injecting at 250 alone first. Ideally you should get ~120 at max bright, max white on 12v before seeing some loss. Power is a silly thing. It runs, nearly interrupted until you start “sipping” off of it. So you should be able to go about 240 pixels from a single injection (120 ‘forwards’ like when you start a strip/string, but also 120 ‘backwards’ when you actually have a middle point.

For a 200 + 300, you’ll have to play with it. The 200, you shouldn’t need to inject in the middle, but you should also run power to the end. The 300, you can probably inject at 200 and be fine.


But again- I haven’t done any real world testing with injection yet. And me being happy with simple, static colors with 100w for 650 pixels doesn’t mean that you will be happy with it.
I’m hoping that I should have my new pigtails and additional strands by Thursday. I will take some pictures of a 400 pixel run then and post the differences in brightness with/without injection- I will probably just take pictures of the bundles of pixels rather than the “set up” version. Which I guess I could do today. But I’m lazy.


The whole thing may sort of fall apart when I nearly double the number of total pixels (have probably 70 more to put in the yard, too) and only have 100w dedicated to it. I can up my max allowed current to 200w with my current PSU, so I’ll make notes of that too.