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LED strips - CAT6 cable


Sjekke

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I need to cut and extend some LED strips. Can I use CAT6 cable to solder it back together.
Taking into account that UTP supports POE I would say yes... anyone have any idea?

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Depending on the type of LED strips, there are special connectors to connect two strips together. On the LED strip there is a specific place where to cut the LED strip. If that is also the case with your LED strips. 

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@Sjekke

SmartHomeEddy aptly noted that there are special connectors/couplings. You're out of a job.
However, I personally use UTP Cat5E to connect tapes up to about 5-10m without problems.
It all depends on how much power the tape has, how far you are from the tape with regard to voltage drops. Then the belt can be fed from two sides, for example.

For RGBW+CCT tapes I use wires:
LED R - UTP Brown
LED G - UTP Green
LED B - UTP Blue
LED White Warm - UTP white/brown
LED White Cold - UTP white/blue
LED + (UTP Orange + white/orange)

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20 hours ago, Sjekke said:

Can I use CAT6 cable to solder it back together.

Maybe. There are a few hurdles. The cable might be copper and in that case you can solder the wires. But it might be CCA aka Copper Clad Aluminium or even pure Aluminium. The CCA sometimes has a very thin copper layer and you may end up destroying that layer during soldering. For CCA and definitely for Alu wire, I would first crimp on a copper or metal ferrule (thin metal tube) - but check if the ferrule accepts solder.... Appearances can be deceptive, not every orangey-pink metal on ebay is copper.  You can crimp 2 or more wires into one ferrule to reduce resistance.

 

After taking the solder-hurdle there is the issue of Ohm's law. You'll get a voltage drop. Cable quality varies and I don't know the current spec of you strip, it is hard to tell if you would notice a brightness drop.

 

20 hours ago, Sjekke said:

taking into account that UTP supports POE I would say yes...

You are a keen observer but POE uses a trick, the same trick as "long distance transport" on the grid: it uses high voltage (typically 48 V) to get low current (per unit of power) and this reduces the effect of the resistance. In this respect, a 24 V LED strip will work better than a 12 V strip

 

So yeah @Martin_N already said it, 

 

4 hours ago, Martin_N said:

It all depends on how much power the tape has

 

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3 hours ago, petergebruers said:

Maybe. There are a few hurdles. The cable might be copper and in that case you can solder the wires. But it might be CCA aka Copper Clad Aluminium or even pure Aluminium. The CCA sometimes has a very thin copper layer and you may end up destroying that layer during soldering. For CCA and definitely for Alu wire, I would first crimp on a copper or metal ferrule (thin metal tube) - but check if the ferrule accepts solder.... Appearances can be deceptive, not every orangey-pink metal on ebay is copper.  You can crimp 2 or more wires into one ferrule to reduce resistance.

 

After taking the solder-hurdle there is the issue of Ohm's law. You'll get a voltage drop. Cable quality varies and I don't know the current spec of you strip, it is hard to tell if you would notice a brightness drop.

 

Yes, that is a valid point.

Not everything is pure copper. In our country it was called "Hitler's copper" - it was usually an iron (or other) alloy thinly coppered. And yes, I've already met the "economical" Chinese version of similar cables with Cat5E.
However, there are some standards and Cat6 in particular would not pass any measurement according to TIA/EIA-568. There would be terrible attenuations and I dare say that such conductors would also behave differently capacitively/inductively, so there would also be crosstalk. But we're talking about data traffic.
If we intend to use UTP for a "dirty" supply of LED strips, there will be no problems with a short distance.
However, the paths on the LED strips have a significantly smaller cross-section than the cable. So the 5m LED strip will already have a problem with itself at the end before it affects the 5m UTP.

eM.

 

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Cat 6 conductors are 0.25 mm2. If you were powering a short strip over a small distance then ok, but otherwise you'll get voltage drop as others have said.

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Guys, I agree with every word you say! @Sjekke if you have a multimeter, now is the time to dust it off and get an idea of how good your cable and LED strip are, and what is "reality" (real ohms and amperes) versus "data sheet specification". Raw materials like Cu an Al and Ni are very high so expect some surprises if your source is not trustworthy.......

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  • 11 hours ago, petergebruers said:

    Guys, I agree with every word you say! @Sjekke if you have a multimeter, now is the time to dust it off and get an idea of how good your cable and LED strip are, and what is "reality" (real ohms and amperes) versus "data sheet specification". Raw materials like Cu an Al and Ni are very high so expect some surprises if your source is not trustworthy.......


    Thanks guys for all your feedback. I will check it this weekend. @petergebruers indeed I have a multimeter, it’s lying next to my Rembrandt 😉

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    @Sjekke you didn't write at all what the length of the cable would be... a discussion about Ohm's law flared up here, we almost started to bring up Kirchhoff (the sum of the current in the nodes and the voltage drop in the loops) and what we don't see will come to Edison's advice (direct current), ...
    :)

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