5V USB-powered LED Strip Test

[@magicfibre]

Thanks for doing actual voltage and current calculations! Most channels just conclude with "the end of the strip is less bright" without providing any numbers.

[@robertgaines-tulsa]

My late mom would of love the frequent appearances of your kitties on your channel.

[@zx8401ztv]

They are quite bright for the 10-12ma passing, i was shocked by the horrible loss of voltage at the end of the line, thats mad. I like the thought of moving one of the supply wires to the other end, simple but evens out the current distribution, sneaky :))

[@DiodeGoneWild]

They save on copper and make the rails very thin. They also designed it poorly, the rails are very narrow around the LEDs. Also the USB cable has like 3 thin copper hairs in it :D. The LED chips seem good though.

[@iagooca]

@@DiodeGoneWild What make the led more bright? The V or de A?

[@EdBuclatin]

Thanks for the electricity flow basics. This is very helpful as I learn more about using LEDs for displays and homes.

[@bryancrawford3498]

Thank you very much for the electrical engineering and math!

[@michelleneri3888]

I got hooked with your explanation, thank you very much for the information! Neat and well to understand.

[@JasonMasters]

If you wanted to use these for an emergency light powered by a USB power bank, you could cut short strips of around 12 LEDs and mount them in a picture frame and bridge the power rails using copper wire; all the positives with one wire and all the negatives with another. That way there would be a lot less current lost and decent brightness all the way along. And if that wasn't enough to even out the current, it would be easy enough to bridge the power rails at both ends and connect positive in one corner and negative in the diagonally opposite corner, similar to your suggestion.

[@JaxDagger]

When it comes to basic 5V RGB strips, is it ok and safe to power it simply using a USB phone charging plug? also how is it then effected it you use USB extensions in the mix too. Hope you don't mind me asking, i'm a complete noob and want to be safe when putting my lights in, haven't ordered yet, planning ahead.

[@MrRedtaco11]

Thanks for doing the video. I have no electrical experience what so ever and I learned somethings from your video. I am trying not to randomly plug in LED stripes to a USB and see what happens. The fact that I am good at math had helped through your video. I do have a question though. Would getting a boost controller help and have all the LED's light up?

[@kiwi-ross]

Thank you for this video - and thanks for leaving your cat in!

[@АндрейЩёголев-м8о]

Thanks for the review and Happy New Year!

[@blackbeton3923]

Nice demonstration !

[@sudiptaghosh6606]

Sir, thanks for the experiment and the knowledge that you have shared with us.It helped me a lot on understanding the mechanism.Thank you.

[@TechBuild]

Wouldn't it be better to power 12-volt LED strips with USB through a boost converter?

[@denniscooper8317]

Tech Build I have a kobalt 24 v battery and an inverter with 2 USBports and was wondering if I could rig up a submersible led light for fishing

[@futbol1972]

Hello so what if I just buy the rbg led strip lights that are already usb? Can I just plug those straight into power bank without buying the 5v to 12v adapter ?? Also if I decide to make my own I can buy any rgb led lights cut the cable (power supply) and solder the 5v-12v converter cable to led lights??

[@thisisdvd8094]

It's kind of odd how these are always rolled onto what is literally a reel-to-reel tape reel, it has the same center hole and everything

[@Elaphae]

Great video, I'll have to order a strip to try. Also glad your cat made an appearance. 😊

[@intel386DX]

may be if the rails are not so thin on those 2 spots where the LED are located, it will be lower resister

[@HappyguyAmazingvideos]

Are you kidding me guys No not us.... Its the manufacturer

[@manickn6819]

Decent analysis. The Chinese will sell anything. Surprising they did not run them over rating. Poor wire though to loose that much power. Sure its was not rated for high power applications so the internal wires are probably quite small. Another approach is running a parallel rail on the strip. Sticking it at various positions and of course soldering it. Speaker wire comes to mind. That would eliminate the parasitic rail resistance.

[@znenic6587]

Where’d you get those? Please tell meeeeeeee!

[@richardnanis]

Just do multiple connection points to the strip to have shorter traces to the power. You should have a connections point every 60 or 80 cm to have evenly lit leds :-)

[@QuaabQueb]

2:07 smart man. You know lol (tape on front camera)

[@DiodeGoneWild]

Yes, I really don't like a camera of a totally connected device pointing at me :).

[@QuaabQueb]

Me either!

[@chaman0113]

Please tell me USB led lights are better or electricity switch ones are better?

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

Depends on for what. If the strip runs on low voltage (24 V and below) with a *safe, certified adapter* (important!), there is no risk of electrocution. The lower the voltage though, the more significant is its drop over wire length.

[@pcgensaj4275]

Good thinking dude 😎👍👌👍✌️

[@gouravpatil3735]

How to purchase it

[@josephmagallanes3487]

Hi ihave a question. Does a 12v led will work on a usb??

[@goodcitizen3780]

Excellent video! Thank you sir

[@ParaglidingManiac]

Will a 5 meter LED strip burn out if I input 7.2 volts instead of USB 5? It's a lithium-ion battery, 2800mAh.

[@jankubistjk7921]

Yes it will. Use a cheap buck converter!

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

@@jankubistjk7921 Good idea, especially when the fully charged battery has over 8 V. The buck converter needs to operate at the entire range of input voltages (6-8.4 V) but not much lower since it would overdischarge the battery. If you want to prolong the life of LEDs but do not care too much about light output, get a 3.3V one for extra efficiency.

[@bahijmaraachli494]

What is that device u connected to your power bank to measure voltage and intensity??

[@JayH7745]

Those cats of yours are very beautiful!

[@Rabisankarpalaka]

How to make it directly with lcd.without use charging adapter

[@SianaGearz]

Maybe they put an extra resistor in the USB plug or in the area where the USB plug is wired into the strip? I have an LED strip i bought for 2 or 3€ at Poco/Domäne that is powered by a 3-series battery pack. They put one resistor inside the battery pack and then made the strip in 3-LED sections, where each section has one resistor, if i remember right. A bit mediocre of a solution you would think, since the LEDs are paralleled in 3s, but it seems to work fine!

[@DiodeGoneWild]

I don't think there's any resistor in the plug. Why use a resistor, if you can make the wire very thin. You save on copper and you save on resistors at the same time :D. The positive and negative wire both drop about the same voltage, so it's not a resistor, unless there are 2 resistors. The LEDs can be put in parallel as long as they have the same voltage drop. LEDs of the same type work ok in parallel.

[@SianaGearz]

:D right OK. But the LEDs never really have the exact same forward voltage drop, they'll be a very tiny bit off by a few hundredth of a volt at a given current; unless they got them off a higher end manufacturer or selected and matched them. They probably pass somewhat different current and light at a somewhat different brightness, but apparently "close enough".

[@DiodeGoneWild]

The voltage drop differences are very small nowadays. The LEDs have some internal resistance, so the current will be spread evenly. I have never seen any problems with parallel LEDs of the same type.

[@raphdlrsro02]

What V of plug should i use in 5meter of that? 5v2a?

[@cwli1]

You need 12V

[@DeDog103]

Where did you buy this?

[@gytax01]

Your battery bank can only supply about 1A, so thats why LED strip draws only about 0.8A. If it could, It would use all 4A and maybe the "current starvation" at the end of the strip wouldn't exist.

[@migsvensurfing6310]

gytax01 Nope. He measured the real voltage on the output and it was slightly above 5 volts.

[@gytax01]

I'm not talking about output voltage.

[@migsvensurfing6310]

gytax01 No but if it wasmstarved by to high current the voltage would drop....get it.

[@gytax01]

Voltage did drop frop 4.99V to 4.80V. You can see that at 2:50

[@au7weeng534]

he did measure 5 V at the powerbank, meaning it's stiff enough 5V at the powerbank, twice ~0.3 V across the USB cable, plus additional voltage drop in 5x2 meters of copper trace

[@akaya0166]

7:43 YOU DIED

[@reng935]

Ok is this safe to use? Im planning to buy the cheap 1m strip :)

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

If your USB adapter is mains-isolated, there is no risk of electrocution. Still, the strip is not water-resistant and even a small drop could cause a short circuit. So, installing a fuse to blow in case of short circuit may be a good idea.

[@antraciet]

Nice piece of maths. Good video.

[@richardnanis]

Never saw this USB-led-strips before - but i use a lot of the 12V strips. Isn't it crazy first to boost up the 3,7V from liion batteries to 5 V and then get rid of the extra voltage with bigger resistors for the led-strip? Would be much more efficient just to run the stripes of the liion cells at 3,7 v. There are better smd leds with 60mA foreward current that you can almost run directly on the liion voltage without any resistors at all. The resistance of the small wires will protect them enough and they can resist a little higher voltage easily i found out. Best and cheap is the SMD 5630 format that can take 60mA but up to 100mA with no problem. I even run them on 3,8 v directly for long time without problems. They draw 130mA at that voltage - more than double the nominal current. They start to die quickly above 200 mA.

[@jimzplace]

i learned something today!!

[@videomaker811]

Cute cat

[@matysta11]

Dík za super video.

[@HolyRamanRajya]

Very informative video. I was thinking of converting my ac lights into usb. Guess its a bad idea.

[@nib123sayme]

I wonder how can your power bank circuit supply 4 Amp current :),had everthign worked fine. It looks like a USB boost converter in your power Bank. What kind of USB boost converter can output 4Amp current. I would really appreciate your help :).

[@urki6237]

its not 4 amps leds are using 0.8 A as u can see in messurment

[@theirisheditor]

One clever trick I've heard that some USB strips do is connect the positive rail at one end of the strip, the negative rail at the other end of the strip and have no resistors at all. As the power must travel down the whole length of the strip for every LED, this acts as the resistor and the LEDs are uniformly bright across the entire strip. I think this was demonstrated in one of BigClive's videos.

[@underscr0e]

low voltage = more loss of voltage...compounding loss is worse/more noticable at lower voltage.

[@AMGTOM]

Are you kidding me Guuuuuuuuuuys ?! Serioussssssly, you might hide the phone brand, you start to have many viewers ! Very nice video indeed !

[@AL_O0]

I think you could put some solder onto the connections between the cuttable LED modules on the top, it should lower the resistance and help dissipate the heat with higher current

[@ahmetdaghanli]

it's meee Maaarioo! :D

[@luiscoelho6985]

Cool! thanks

[@Akshatgiri]

Thanks mate

[@SephConUno]

This is why you learn maths

[@sanwalfarooque2747]

Thank you

[@migsvensurfing6310]

Yep, was to expect. Nicely demonstrated. Youre usb meter also seems to be dodgy at least on voltage. I throw two of them in the recyle bin a week ago.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

You're right, those USB meters are not very accurate. The problem is also made worse by the high resistance of the cheap USB connectors in it. It can easily drop 0.6V

[@clearriver5987]

every time we learn new trick

[@sroberts605]

Excellent! Killing accent too.

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

1:04 Please do not call the LED sections "pixels" - these are not pixels unless individually controllable. Some strips, usually RGB ones, allow individual control of LEDs over a serial interface but this one doesn't.

[@majdinj]

I think if try USB wall adapter rated to deliver 3A for example, you will have different results. The power bank you use can't deliver more than 1A. Of course this doesn't explain the high resistance in the traces and you will have more current mA in the beginning of the strip comparing to its end.

[@coldforest1187]

hi Diode)

[@jackarock6425]

That voice!!!

[@rigidhammer7376]

Nope. That accent!

[@masterchef5733]

Nice accent! It annoys may cats and dogs..they are still thinking which country you came from🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@n33oh]

Thanks!

[@josipzlk8019]

I wonder how 5 m one woud do if this one is so bad

[@josipzlk8019]

The end may not even light up.

[@DiodeGoneWild]

The end will light up, but even a bit dimmer. This can go to infinity. The end will never be totally dark, it will be just very dim. The lower the voltage, the lower the current, so it drops less and less voltage...

[@josipzlk8019]

DiodeGoneWild Ah I see I didnt think the right way. Voltage on the rails would never sag lower than led foreward voltage and it would go into infiniti you are right :)

[@edgarkoterle]

Tie úbytky sú bežné a viditeľné aj pri LED pásoch na 12V, preto je pri takých dĺžkach lepšie zapájať plus aj mínus z obidvoch koncov, prípadne ešte aj niekde v strede.

[@therealjammit]

Re-wire it so the plus is connected to the start of the strip and negative to the end of the strip. Not perfect but helps even it out.

[@Shadow_of_STLKR]

I have the same problem with 4,5m 5V RGB strip but it draws 2,5A. Too much for any charger. Bright white but the end is yellow and dimmed.

[@abdx7777]

Well , that English accent is completely screwed

[@IvarsONE]

Not Bad

[@rahilakhan6191]

Bhaiya zyada mathas mat padha aur. English bol spanish nhi😁🙄

[@clearriver5987]

thanks helpful video

[@longrunner258]

Well for a start, they could have chosen a more sensible resistor value, say 1 to 2 kΩ; sure it wouldn't be as bright at the start, but it would be more even. That lead sure is piss-poor, though. Would be interesting to compare its construction to that of a counterfeit mains cord…

[@DiodeGoneWild]

Yes, and they also could have made the board track layout better, so the tracks are not so thin around the LEDs.

[@Pageportal455]

Wth..!! Your power bank can't output enough current to power the LEDs. The strip is perfect fine. And also when voltage increases the power loss across resistors increase. Stop misguiding people.

[@nyetloki]

Cool Stuff except the 12V strips are more efficient, and since they use the current more efficiently, a lower total current means less power loss. A typical 12V strip can do 5 meters with only some fading at the other end.

[@alibehrouz9833]

so well

[@vBDKv]

wow 4 amps .. And I just ordered a 5m roll for usb lol .. Guess I'll be cutting.

[@bukharianscreation7189]

Plz tell how u joint charger with led

[@reng935]

Mahi Abrar it is made with a usb connector

[@MuhammadAfzal-ep9fl]

Sir 1W led light is equal to how many volt?

[@jakubmiskech42617]

Stavím sa že je to ČECH.

[@mohitsorout6669]

I had watched a lot of vadio on your channel all are perfect expect one theair is some mistake in ckt diagram

[@DiodeGoneWild]

Where's the mistake? :)

[@mohitsorout6669]

DiodeGoneWild in a Chinese charger ckt diagram

[@mohitsorout6669]

DiodeGoneWild I will send you both correct and incorrect ckt diagram

[@mohitsorout6669]

DiodeGoneWild if you interested

[@Cromwellsarmy]

your accent though :O

[@fahadahmed480]

aaah his accent is making me go crazy

[@AutodidactEngineer]

You have sus voice

[@mohitsorout6669]

So I am 4th at your channel and want to know about your study

[@vaclavtrpisovsky]

No formal studies of electronics, just a public grammar school in Mělník and University of Economics in Prague. All the knowledge comes from 30 years of experience.

[@fatemakawsar7266]

Plese make ips vedio

[@MsArion246]

Hello first

[@mohitsorout6669]

Can I get reply

[@migsvensurfing6310]

mohit sorout No😁

[@MISKKHAN07]

Hello i m 3rd like your video

[@oswaldfix4155]

Pane boze co je to za anglictinu to je hrozny