🔥Power Budget

LEDs are power suckers. Do not lose matches over this simple math.

It is best to budget 30mA per LED. These strips are 60 LEDs/m, so assuming you want to drive all of them, you will run 1.8A/m. You can drive them at less intensity to turn this down, or you can drive every other LED to effectively turn the 60 LEDs/m into 30 LEDs/m. You can either count LEDs or measure to know how much current the LEDs will have.

The typical way to drive these is through CTRE's VRM, which will output a continuous 1.5A at 12V. Please beware this will only support 50 LEDs (0.03 times 50) at full brightness. If using a VRM, DO NOT share the VRM with the radio or switch, as these are CRITICAL to robot functioning. Please use either a separate VRM or one of these Pololu regulators, rated for 12V 2.5A continuous, or 83 LEDs (2.5 divided by 0.03). It is legal to use as many of these regulators as you want on a custom circuit, so our 5 meter strip should give plenty of lights for all your needs.

An aside on full brightness - these are R, G, B LEDs, so these LEDs will sink 30mA when these are all white. When programming them, you can make it so this never occurs and these are never fully on. We recommend measuring the current draw with a multimeter if you are concerned about drawing too much current like so.