LED Receiver Output – online calculator

How much LED tape can your LED receiver control? That depends on the receiver’s output wattage (per channel), and the power drawn by each metre of your LED tape. InStyle’s easy-to-use online calculator can help.


LED Receiver Output – amps, volts & channels

The output wattage supplied by an LED receiver is calculated like this:

amps per channel x number of channels used by the LED tape x LED tape voltage

The number of channels used by the LED tape is perhaps the trickiest notion to grasp here. An LED tape uses a separate channel for each colour it can display – so, for example, an RGB LED strip will draw power from three of your receiver’s output channels (one for Red, one for Blue & one for Green).

White or Single-Colour LED tape = 1 channel

Dual-White aka CCT LED tape = 2 channels (warm-white & cool-white)

RGB LED tape = 3 channels (red, blue & green)

RGBW LED tape = 4 channels (red, blue, green & white)

RGB+CCT LED tape = 5 channels (red, blue, green, warm-white & cool-white)

RGBW LED tape draws output from 4 channels

The simplest way to figure out how many channels your LED tape is using is to remember that there is a dedicated negative (-) lead to each colour… so

number of channels used by the LED tape = number of -ve leads attached

Multichannel receiver with its LED power supplies

LED Tape Voltage – feature lights or task lights

InStyle LED supply LED strip lights that require either a 12-volt or a 24-volt power supply. The voltage your LED tape uses is a significant factor in the calculation of your receiver’s output wattage.

Simply put, your LED receiver will provide twice as much power to 24V LED tape as it will to 12V LED tape.

As a rule of thumb, low-intensity feature lights and highlights need a 12-volt power supply, while high-brightness working lights and main room lighting use 24 volts. But when using the LED Receiver Output calculator, you should check the specs of your LED tape product.

Multichannel Receivers – no need to use all the channels

The product listings for our LED receivers specify the wattage they can output for each channel, rather than the receiver’s maximum total output. That’s because you may not be using every channel, so your LED tape won’t draw the maximum wattage that the receiver can output.

For example, a 4-channel LED receiver supplying 8 amps per channel can output a maximum of

8 amps x 4 channels x 24 volts = 768 watts

But if you’re using the receiver to drive 3-channel RGB LED tape (rather than 4-channel RGBW), it won’t output 768W, but rather

8 amps x 3 channels x 24 volts = 576 watts

That’s a big difference. It’s why it’s essential to enter the correct number of channels in your calculations!