At the beginning of this season, 3574 had originally planned on just upping the number of WS2812 strips from last year. As part of that effort, I designed a PCB to simplify connecting power and buffer the logic levels. We ultimately switched over to using rigid scanned LED arrays, but if these designs can help other teams, that would be awesome.
Features- 45 Amp Anderson connector mounted on board
- Up to 96 watts of LED driving power!
- Optional zener diode mounts, protect your strips
- 5v buffered outputs for the newer model strips
- Mounting points for 12v 10000uF filter caps
These design features came from what we've learned from last year in terms of what keeps the strips happy.
The board is designed to hold up to 2 of these:
https://www.pololu.com/product/2866. There's a 6A version that has the same footprint.
The Eagle designs and SEEED Fusion ready gerbers are here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpgecupc2m...Power.zip?dl=0
To meet the max power requirements, these boards are designed assuming 2oz copper, which is available at reasonable cost here:
http://www.seeedstudio.com/service/
Suggested improvements- Add through-holes for the voltage regulators
- Add a fuse holder at the input
- Add a high current jumper for only using 1 regulator
- Properly space the screw terminal headings