I am designing a chainable module of three parallel LED strips with individually addressable LEDs (WS2812B @ 144LEDs/m). When connecting one module to another, each LED strips data channel of the one module will be connected to the Data channel of the corresponding LED strip of the other module. So no matter how many modules I connect, it will act like three long LED strips.
The power of each module will be provided by its internal batteries only. The ground wire is passed on to the next modules, so that all modules share the same ground.
The power is provided by four 10440 Li-ion batteries in parallel, which are connected through a BCU.
I use four batteries per module, since The BCUs cutoff current is 4A, but the maximum current I can draw from a single battery is 1 A. So using 4 batteries in parallel would make it possible to draw 4A from them.
The total length of all the modules I will connect will be around 1.5m (so 3 LED strips with ~1.5m each)
My questions:
- Does current flow through the ground wire between the modules? In theory not, since the whole circuit is complete within the module.
- Does the ground wire connecting the modules need a particular thickness? Since no or very little current flows, I can use a thin wire, right?
- Assuming I check that the batteries are charged to the same voltage before putting them in, is it safe to have them in parallel like this? I have read somewhere that I'd need to put a resistor between the batteries to limit the current in case they are out of balance and start charging each other, but wouldn't that drain the batteries to death?
- Do you see any other problems with my diagram?
