LED Strip Lighting Project–Part2

My first LED Driver Power Supply unit turned up from China, only took 9 days to get to the UK which wasn’t bad.

DC 12V 15A 180W Switch Power Supply Driver Transformer For LED Strip Light 220V

The power supply is all you get, no cables no instructions. You can see there are terminals for Live, Neutral, Earth / Ground, there are 2x COM (Common or negative) and two +V which is the DC positive. There is also a +V adjustment screw, they are set to 12V DC as standard so you shouldn’t need to move this adjustment screw, I did test mine with a multi-meter to double check it was outputting 12V DC which it was.



There is also a 110 V / 220 V switch on the inside, mine was set to 220 V by default which is correct for the UK, if your in the US it would have to be set to 110V. It is very important you set this switch correctly before attempting to plug in to the mains supply or you will probably blow up the power supply unit.

You can’t really see on this photo but the 110 V / 220 V switch is located inside you can flick the switch with a thin screwdriver.



I just used some regular 3 core electrical flex cable and a 13amp plug



Here you can see the wiring for the AC mains input, UK colours:
brown = live
blue = neutral
yellow with green = earth / ground



There is a good American Youtube video here about wiring up your LED Driver Power Supply, they don’t seem to use Earth / Ground on the American videos I have watched.

WARNING:

This should be very obvious but do not connect the plug to the mains wall socket and then touch the exposed wires as you will electrocute yourself and believe me a 240V shock is not nice! I’ve had a few in the past when working on old computers that weren’t as safe as they are these days. Watch the Youtube video for more information.

Well that’s it for part 2 as this is the only component to arrive so far, more coming soon.

Part 3 here.