Need advice for 4.5-volt circuits for Menard's buildings.

Five amps is a lot for LED lighting. How close will these buildings be to one another? You should be able to daisy chain the power to more than one building from the 5 amp supply. Doesn't Menards have additional plugs and accessories to help with this?

Menards Accessory Kit

May also depend on the specific building.  Does it have animated signs or a motorized sign?  Those add to the mA requirements also.  5A wall wart may still do it, but something else to consider.

I run several Menards (and other) buildings, all using a ZW- with a few AC/DC Adjustable Buck Converters. 

- I set up one converter running at 3 v for street lighting

- one at about 4v for the Menard's buildings (I like them to be slightly low for longevity and realism)

- a separate one set at 3.0 v devoted to my York Hotel (SO many LED's!), to be not so bright.

- one at 12v for all by other LED-lighted buildings that have purchased LEDs, needing resistors.

Thanks Guys,  All of my Menards units at the present time are only using led lighting.  No units with an out of the ordinary current draw.  My layout is rather small only about 16' X 18', the building will be at random spacing.          Tks. Tommy 

You can buy the male plugs really cheap online and make your own daisy chain, without sodering, its much cheaper than all the adaptors and cabling. Theres females available as well if you dont want to cut off your menards plug. Im currently using 4 of the menards power supplies for  19 buildings, and i still have room on each one for future. I used 4 due to the large area im spread over. Banjoflyer is correct count your Leds up at 20mA each and dont go over your power supplies rated output and you will be fine. 

I suggest something more than 4.5V DC as your low-voltage bus.  Then use inexpensive adjustable DC-to-DC step down modules.  Note Mike Wyatt's post; most guys find Menards buildings look better when driven by, say, 4.0 to 4.3V - in other words less than the fixed 4.5V DC from a Menard's power adapter.  The adjustable step down modules are about $1 (eBay, free shipping from Asia) if you don't mind some light soldering...or for about $2 you can even get one with a built-in voltmeter and screw-terminal connectors.  Example shown below - in this case dialed in to 3.0V.  

The Menards 4.5V 5A adapter appears to be $20 MSRP.  That adapter provides "only" 22.5 Watts of DC power.  For less than half that price you can easily find DC adapters providing more than double the power.  For example, I've posted about 90 Watt laptop chargers that have selectable DC output voltage that go for less than $10 on eBay (free shipping).  Here's one that you select 1 of 7 DC voltages between 12V-24V DC.  PC power supplies you might scrounge for free from a retired PC will have 12V DC output with gobs of power.

As others point out, there are decisions/choices to be made with distribution - connectors, cables, adapters, terminal strips, or just twist wire-nuts!  But I find it useful to first settle on the configuration.

Separately, to your point about estimating your actual power requirements.  Over time various guys have reported in on actual power for specific Menards buildings.  Unfortunately, I don't think the info has been consolidated.    I believe the smallest building uses only 2 LEDs, and yet there are buildings with hundreds of LEDs!  So the requirements are indeed all over the map. 

There are many ways to do the math with respect to Volts, Amps, Watts, etc.  But like your own home lighting, I like to think in terms of Watts.  All the reports here on OGR suggest Menards buildings use ~50 mW (0.05 Watts) per LED.  So their small 4.5 Watt adapter (4.5V, 1A) can power around 100 LEDs while their large 22.5 Watt adapter (4.5V, 5A) can power several hundred.  And using the adjustable step down modules, you can dial down the brightness to, say, 25mW per LED and double the # of LEDs.

Stan, some PC power supplies have a 5 volt tap, also. I ran the 5 volts to the building and used one diode to get under the 4.5 volt requirement. I do the same for Miller signs. I use the 12 volt tap for led strips on all my buildings. I don't think I will ever get close to the 300 watt rating of the power supply (25 amps @ 12 vdc).

A couple of years ago there were some threads on LED lighting, using 18VAC to 12VDC buck converters which included references on building your own (I built a few dozen) which could have different DC output voltages depending on resistor selection, and listed some available for about $2 from China which had variable voltage output.

Does anyone have a link to a source for the plugs?

banjoflyer posted:

MichRR714 posted:

Does anyone have a link to a source for the plugs?

If you are referring to the Menards plugs they were referenced in the second post.

You can find them here.

Mark

I was referring to just the plugs themselves for the buildings if your supplying power from a buck converter.

MichRR714 posted:

banjoflyer posted:

MichRR714 posted:

Does anyone have a link to a source for the plugs?

If you are referring to the Menards plugs they were referenced in the second post.

You can find them here.

Mark

I was referring to just the plugs themselves for the buildings if your supplying power from a buck converter.

On eBay, search for "5.5 2.1 male pigtail" and you will get over a thousand listings.  You will have to sort thru to find appropriate length.  But you should not have to pay more than, say, 25 cents for a plug with bare "pigtail" wires attached that can be attached to the output of the DC-to-DC step down (buck) converter module.

The Menards accessory kits provide what amounts to pigtail plugs by cutting/splicing their cables.  But when you do the math these end up being several times more expensive than what you can get on eBay...though I suppose if you live near a Menards bricks-mortar store you can pick them up today.

Hi Guys, thanks to each and  everyone for all of the positive reply's to my questions.  After reviewing all your suggestions and thinking about and mulling over whats gonna be best for me at this time I think I shall go with this:

1 each 90 W PS 110-220 v to DC 12v to 24v.  About $9.00 + S&H via internet.

12 each Male/Female DC Power Plug adapter.  About 0.76 each+ S&H via internet .

Approx. 10-12 each # LM 2596 Buck step down DC to DC converters.   About $2.20 + S&H via internet.

I think and hope the above items will get me off the ground and onto the learning curve.

Stan4000 and you other guys, If I could get into a China Man's website to order these items, I would appreciate it very much.

My Best Regards

Tommy

Hi Guys, thanks to each and  everyone for all of the positive reply's to my questions.  After reviewing all your suggestions and thinking about and mulling over whats gonna be best for me at this time I think I shall go with this:

1 each 90 W PS 110-220 v to DC 12v to 24v.  About $9.00 + S&H via internet.

12 each Male/Female DC Power Plug adapter.  About 0.76 each+ S&H via internet .

Approx. 10-12 each # LM 2596 Buck step down DC to DC converters.   About $2.20 + S&H via internet.

I think and hope the above items will get me off the ground and onto the learning curve.

Stan4000 and you other guys, If I could get into a China Man's website to order these items, I would appreciate it very much.

My Best Regards

Tommy

Instead of getting a 120VAC>12VDC converter, I recommend you consider, especially if, like many model RRers, uou run a 14-18 VAC accessory circuit around the layout, getting devices that convert 14-18 VAC to 4.5 VDC, and then putting one of these wherever you have a Menards building or buildings.  These converters, last time I bought a batch, run under $2.  They feature adjustable output voltages.

You mention the Buck DC to DC converters.  At equal prices, there are low voltage AC to DC converters.

Cut and paste this number in an eBay search   323405457109

 Also based on the LM2596. Don't be fooled by the listing. They name common voltages like 3.3, 5, 12, 24 volts. These modules have a continuous potentiometer adjustment so that you can dial in any output voltage you want. I just bought some of these and had no trouble going from 11 vac to a clean steady 5 vdc. The 11 vac came from a 1033 transformer.

Leo, thanks.  That's essentially the gizmo I was referring to.  You will probably also find some at aliexpress by searching the LM2596.  Prices will be all over the lot.  I've had no problems ordering electronic stuff from China.  Comes fairly quickly.