Hello,
I am working with several students on a scrolling marquee sign for our school. We are planning to control the 6 - rgb led 64x32 6mm matrix panels (using 2 chains of 3) with a Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB Memory). Our plan is to purchase the panels from Adafruit. Adafruit suggests a 5V 4A Switching Power Supply. My question is, will we need to order 6 of these power supplies? One for each panel? Or is there a better way to supply power to these panels? Any insight the community has would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Chris
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Hi @chris_reed,
5 days since you left this post so I hope it reaches you in time! There’s a short and long way to answer this.
Short answer: No. 4A is probably not enough for 6 panels. I’d begin with a 5V 20A supply. Something this one off Amazon for $21 (link). You may need to crimp the red and black power cables using spade connectors or ring terminals, in order to connect them to the power supply, but you can easily search up how to do this online (plus high amp connectors should be of this type anyway!)
Long: Even if these panels ‘work’ scrolling some text with a smaller power supply, you will always be at risk of the whole system crashing if too much power is drawn. For example, really large scrolling text that causes lots of the LEDs to shine white at the same time. So regarding power supplies for LED projects, bigger is always better. Electrically speaking, its best to use as few power supplies as possible, but should be ok to use multiple providing they are sharing the same ground (and the ground is a solid connection). For 6 panels, I would personally try and use a single large power supply (20-30A), but depending on your application, how far the screens are apart, the wiring etc etc., I’m sure two 15-20A power supplies would work as well. It’s really up to you. But relating to your question directly, don’t use a single power supply for each panel, that would be a wiring nightmare and much more expensive than solutions suggested above.
Hope this helps!
Hello @hensonar - thank you VERY much for your insight. This is very helpful and will save us some bucks in our project. Thank you!
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