Best way to program C9 Pixel Bulbs

[pmbarber]

Hello, I was wanting to get a little help for the optimal way to program my roof outline. I will attach a photo for help understanding. I have 300 C9 Brilliant bulbs. I have 100 (2 strands) going over my garage gutter, up the roof, back down which makes a triangle. The other 200 (3 strips) starts on the left side of front gutter, continues along the font of the house, then up the roof line. I am trying to minimize power injections, or running even more wires to the controller down my roof. Can I run all 300 to one channel and then power inject at the other end? Open to all suggestions. Thank you

[Stosh]

You can run all 300 to one channel, yes.  The success of your power inject at the end will depend.  It will depend mostly on the power usage of the pixels.  If you only run at 50% power or less, you'll probably be OK, but I'm pretty sure you'd have problems at 100% power.  For my setups, I figure the max pixels is around 100 in both directions before you need to inject.  So if powering at each end, I figure 200 is max.

Honestly the best way is to test it.  Set your controller to test mode and set everything at 100% white and see what happens.  The pixels will tell you if they need more power.

[allknowing2012]

Strips are said to be more picky in terms of needing the voltage. Yep .. test them .. you can test them before you put them up :-) just be sure to have the cables you are using to go from the controller to the first pixel as part of the bench testing..

[pmbarber]

Thanks for the suggestions. When I power inject, can I just run the power injection to an empty channel minus the data of course? Or do I need to attach directly to empty terminals on the power supply?

[Stosh]

Going to an empty channel (minus data) should work fine, but that method would not be preferred because of future expansion.  If you go through the trouble of connecting to your power supply (or power distribution board), this will be future-ready.  Keep in mind your power supply will have a maximum number of pixels it can power (based on total wattage).

[Gilrock]

I attached a photo of one of my power injection boxes.  It has two 350w 12v power supplies and the 12DC output runs over to Falcon Distro cards to provide a 5A fuse for each output.  Then there are pigtails attached to each output.  Then you make cables with 18/3 cord from maybe Home Depot and solder your own pigtails on the ends.  I use Y cables to tap in the power.  The second drawing shows how I accomplish the power injection to my icicles using this box.  I also run some of the outputs to my Merry Christmas sign.

[pmbarber]

That is a nice setup. I take it you been at this awhile