I second the 9A Pololu converter. This is a newer model than what we used last year, and handles over-voltage better. Make sure you add a decently beefy capacitor on the output. For the further paranoid, you can add a reverse biased zener diode to short power and ground when you go over voltage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by philso
Use this or one of the 12V to 5V Voltage Converters from previous years (check the output current capacity first).
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Nothing in previous KoP's goes over 3 amps I believe.
Quote:
Originally Posted by philso
The internal circuitry of all the linear regulators I have ever looked at are such that they can only source current and cannot sink current. Because of this, they cannot "fight" each other. The one that has the highest output voltage, by even a few millivolts, will end up supplying most or all of the output current. The other ones will sense the higher output voltage and shut off their output stage so that they supply little or no current to the load. In this mode of operation, they are not likely to be damaged.
The output isolating resistors will cause the output voltage to be lower than what you may want unless there is circuitry to compensate for them.
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Correct, you get pretty vicious leader/follower cycles. There are some switching power supplies that do support paired regulators, but they're not very common or cheap.
What you can do is independently power a subset of the strips. Last year we had 10 meters of WS2812 broken up into 5 strips, and used 3 separate regulators. You can see the cable bundle here:
http://hackcasual.io/images/bling_installed.jpg