# Powering a WS2812B strip

After always being interested in learning more about electronics, I figured LED-strips would be a great start.

I'd like to power a 4 meter WS2812B-LED-strip (60 LEDs/m). These run on 5V and draw about 60mA per LED. That's 14.5A, or 75W. However, I've yet to find any power supplies for these figures, only imported industrial ones - which feels a bit scary with my limited knowledge.

I've understand that powering it through the Arduino is a bad idea, but what's the simplest and cheapest solution for powering it? I do have a bunch of old supplies for laptops and whatnot lying around.

• At those kinds of currents/power, you can set your house on fire, so you'd better find something more tame to make your debut in EE. If using industrial PSUs is "a bit scary", why do you think that improvising something would be safer? – Fizz Oct 8 '15 at 16:48
• @RespawnedFluff I've found several consumer level supplies for 10A (which seems to be the magic limit), I'm confident that I can handle the soldering part. I could reduce the strip to 3 meters and then using the 10A supply -- would you still consider it a bad idea? – Zar Oct 8 '15 at 16:51
• If you cut the strip into two halves, the current for each is 14.5/2=7.25, so two 10A power supplies would be enough (you always want some headroom; I'd be tempted to cut into three pieces and use 3 PSU's to give 100% headroom if it's possible the PSUs aren't well ventilated). Join the data-out of one half to the data-in of the other and drive as one strip, or just drive the two data-in's of the two halves independently. – gbulmer Oct 8 '15 at 19:51