I have the following situation. I have a bunch of WS2812 led-strips around the bed. Even in off-state these consume about 1mA per LED, meaning that with 1000 LEDs I鈥檓 burning 5W constantly, while they鈥檙e off (which is their normal state for 95% of the time).
In addition, the one-wire-WS2812 protocol is very sensitive to noise on the net. Last night I switched off another lamp, and the first 5 LEDs on the strip jumped to some random colour. My MP writes all zeros on the line once a second, so the lights went off within a second, but this is not something I want to happen in the middle of the night.
My idea was to cut power to the whole LED strip if it鈥檚 not in use. This is an 18A 5V connection that I have to disconnect (and, to be clear, it has to be done silently, I don鈥檛 need a click when I switch off my lights late at night, or start the day with a click before my wake-up lights come on).
My initial idea was to use an Solid State Relay (SSR). Most seem to be made to deal with 230-400V (I know it will work with 5V, but it鈥檚 overkill), and you鈥檒l have to pay up if you want it to switch 18A. I considered killing the power to the 5V power supply but (1) then I need another power supply for my MP and (2) the power-supply makes noise when it鈥檚 powered up.
My question is: does anyone know of a better solution than an SSR? It should be something that can deal with 18A (and obviously have very minimal voltage drop, because it would fry the device). Or is SSR my only solution?
脳2 (DoomHammer, Claude)
脳1 (pjoter)
I advice looking for it on your own