Use of 1000uf capacitor on LED strip power line....yes/no?

[farleysynth]

The Adafruit neopixel uberguide recommends a 1000uf cap across the power of an LED strip.

 Before connecting a NeoPixel strip to ANY source of power, we very strongly recommend adding a large capacitor (1000 µF, 6.3V or higher) across the + and – terminals. 
This prevents the initial onrush of current from damaging the pixels.

I haven't seen this mentioned much elsewhere ? Not in Paul's walls?

I'm about to wrap up a 30LED/M x 3M * 16 APA102 strips project...and wondering if I really should do this on each strip. I did use the cap while breadboarding with 12 strips and I've got it working great with 16 strips off a protoboard w/Teensy 3.1 and 2 Meanwell 5V 60A PSU and no caps.

Is there any harm in using the caps? Or negative project impact? Seems to make sense in dealing with the current surge but I think it's odd not to see it mentioned more as a "best practice"

Thanks for any advice, insights, etc.

 

[instrumentek]

The only issue I see would be overloading the power supply during an In rush when first powering up charging the caps. Is that same 5v supply also powering your teensy? The power supply will already have caps built into it as well on the output. I would personally leave it alone unless you start to have issues. I would however separate the teensy from the same supply if you haven't done that already

 

[Constantin]

You can always install a rate-limiting varistor or resistor upstream of the cap to keep it within spec of the power supply.

In general, I'd counsel two power supplies - a small one for the Teensy, and a beefy one for the LEDs. They have to share a ground.

 

[farleysynth]

Thank you for the replies. My main concern, was frying a few first LED in the strips. But it's working fine w/o the caps, in a few multi-hr runs and many stops and starts.

Except I do have a cap on the line going to the teensy...this line is on the PSU serving the strips. I'll put the teensy on it's on supply.

Thanks again!

 

[lampbus]

I had an issue with long runs of addressable colour change LED strips a few years ago - the voltage drop at high brightness/all on at the far end of the strip caused the 5v to droop so the drivers in the end foot or two couldn't maintain the LEDs.

A 1000 uf at the far end may have helped me there.

(they were the original Adafruit addressable led strips) I don't know how the newer improved ones would behave.