QuinLED An-Penta-Plus Power Handling
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When hooking up LED strip to your dimmer, power handling is an important factor to take into account in your design. The QuinLED An-Penta dimmers have built in fuses for extra safety and this needs to be taken into account when hooking up your LED strips.
The QuinLED An-Penta-Plus comes equipped with 4x 8A (red) and 1x 5A (orange) positive output channels. This means the total power the board is able to handle is up to 37A in total but it’s recommended to keep this around 30A continuous total.
When hooking up your LED strip (in whatever configuration you need the 5 channels) you can mix and match the positive wires of the LED strip between the 4x red positive out channels that are available. Please do some estimated calculations how to divide the positive wires (if you are using multiple strips) between the available terminals and with that given power of your strips.
Voltage supported
The QuinLED An-Penta-Plus supports 12v, 24v, 36v and 48v LED strips. It can also support other forms of LEDs as long as they can be controlled with Constant Voltage PWM regulation. The An-Penta-Plus is not a CC or Constant Current controller.
Special Buck-converter option for digital
Since digital LED strip often uses a different voltage vs Analog there is a special buck-converter option on the An-Penta-Plus. The capabilities of this port is mostly determined by what buck-converter you connect to it.
Positive side – Divide LEDs over output fuses
If you for instance have 5x white LED strip it’s advised to divide the 5x positive wires based on power draw. If all strips are the same type/make/model this is easily done by diving the length connected over the terminals.
Thus if say you have 14.4w watt per meter LED strip running at 24v, and you want to hook up a total of 10m of LED strip divided over 1 strip of 4m, 2 strips of 2m and 2 strips of 1m. Looking at it from a wattage and Amp standpoint this would look like:
What does each strip use?
- 4m = 14.4w x 4 = 57,6w / 24v = 2,4A
- 2m = 14.4w x 2 = 28,8w / 24v = 1,2A
- 1m = 14.4w x 1 = 14,4w / 24v = 0,6A
Checking total Amps
- 1x 2,4A + 2x 1,2A + 2x 0,6A = 6A
Divided over outputs
- Output 1: 1x 2,4A + 1x 1,2A = 3,6A total
- Output 2: 1x 1,2A + 2x 0,6A = 2,4A total
I know that might look slightly complicated when first looking at it, but again, to simplify it, if you are hooking up the same type of LED strip to all outputs you can just look at the lengths you are hooking up and try to hook up the same length wise to both positive outputs.
Negative (PWM) side – Per channel available power
The dimming output ports on the QuinLED An-Penta-Plus have their own limits, next to the positive output limits discussed above. The QuinLED An-Penta-Plus comes with 5x “high” power channels.
- “low” power channel recommended max 3A
- “medium” power channel recommended max 5A
- “high” power channel recommended max 10A
Other boards in the QuinLED An-Penta Line-up feature more or different output power capable channels allowing you to select the dimmer that best suits your needs.
Just like above on the positive side, please divide your LED strips over the channels with their given expected power draw. You are allowed to run multiple strips in parallel off the same channel as long as you stay below the max total limit for that channel.
Can I combine?
Because of the way fuses operate you cannot combine 2 fuses on a single injection but you are allowed to “combine” fuses when connected to different parts of the LED strip when doing power injection.
But, even though that’s possible on the positive side, you run into the max limit of the individual output channels. If you wish for instance want to run 10m continuous 24v 19.2w/m strip with power injection at the front and end you would need up to 8A from with the An-Penta-Plus. You can use a single Positive and single Dimming channel. For higher power strip such as long stretches of 24v 28.8w/m or even the ultra bright 24v 38.4w/m strips you need to split the strips and divide them over multiple positive and/or dimming channels.
High PWM frequency = extra heat
The above limits (especially for the channel side) are set for a PWM frequency of ~20kHz. If you have the desire to run your PWM frequency (much) higher this will increase the switches losses for the MOSFETs. This in turn results in extra generated heat. It’s best to downrate channel limits a little bit when increasing frequency. Sadly I can’t give you an exact figure, doubling frequency doesn’t double the heat but if say you went from ~20kHz to ~120kHz this would increase MOSFET heat to such a degree that I would downrate each channel 1 tier. So a “medium” power channel goes from 5A to a “low” power channel tier and thus 3A.
If you have a specific application please reach out to us on Discord to see if what you are looking to do has already been tried/tested or not!
