Led Matrix Arduino

Question

I am not an electrical engineer, however I am putting together an Arduino Nano Led Matrix 40x20 Led grid, I was wondering what power supply I should use so everything works properly without destroying anything.

This is what was recommended for a 10x10 grid. 5V 4A Power Supply: http://amzn.to/1UhdJfB

I will also be using WS2812B LEDs if that makes any difference. Also if you know a good software to make the led animations that would be great too, the software I have is limiting.

Answer 1

According to the pololu website

Each RGB LED draws approximately 50 mA when it is set to full brightness and powered at 5 V

a 10x10 grid consists of 100 leds, i.e. 5A, so 4A is undersized (if you try to light them all at full brightness and white you may experience problems).

This said, 40x20 leds are 800 leds, which means 40A (plus the arduino). This current is really high, and requires proper thinking about HOW to deliver this to the leds.

You can find a lot of power supplies on the web (a quick search on ebay found a lot of power supplies for about 25 USD, just search 5v 40a and you'll find a list of them); personally, since the price difference is low, I'd go with a 5v 60a power supply, so you are not pushing it to its limit when full brightness is on.

Then, how to deliver it. I tend to oversize everything, but I'd group the leds in 10 groups of 80, then connect a thick wire (at least AWG14 or bigger) to both ends of each group and then pull all of them to the power supply. The data lines can be daisy chained together. Something like this:

The green wires are connected to Din, the blue ones to Dout. In short, you have to group the 20 rows in 10 groups, power each group with a separate wire (the AWG14 wires should go directly to the power supply, each will deliver up to 4A) and daisy chain the data wires of the groups.

If you have questions, just ask ;)

Answer 2

You can use 5V supply since most of devices including arduino, matrix display use 5V. Amp rating of supply varies according to the number of devices (LED's) connected. If you are using WS2812B LED (RGB) u can use 3.5~5.3V. To program arduino nano you can use official arduino ide from their official site, using which you can do limitless patterns expandable upto your imagination.