RGB 5050 lights and Deep Cycles

[randy_waterhouse]

Bear with me...virgin burner, virgin builder, etc.

I am building a vehicle for my partner who is disabled (a modified golf cart) to use on the playa, I recently acquired some RGB 5050 LEDs with a 12v6a driver and remote control.

Being new to these things I was thinking I could just wire up a plug to match the input on the driver to a deep cycle marine battery and be good, but then I got to thinking about the typical amps coming out of one of those and started questioning....can I just do that? or do I need some sort of thing to step down the amperage into the driver/controller?

[Jackass]

If the light controller is 12VDC, then yes it's fine to hook to a 12V battery no matter what it's potential. The device will only draw what it needs...

[Captain Goddammit]

Amps, or current draw, is a measure of how much power a device uses. Like Jackass said, it'll only draw what it needs.
The electric outlets in your house can supply 15 or 20 amps and you plug your cell phone charger into them, and it doesn't even draw one amp.
The part you need to figure out is how you'll keep that battery charged. There's no something-from-nothing.

[BBadger]

Usually you should assume that the battery/power supply can supply infinite amounts of current at the specified voltage. This isn't always the case, but for deep cycle batteries, unless you're using a huge amount of amps (like trying to start your car engine), you can pretty much treat it as supplying all the amps you need.

The power supply (driver) will be the device that regulates the current for your LEDs. Assuming you keep within its ratings it won't die on you.

I would still see how many amps you're drawing just so you know when to pull the plug and recharge your batteries. You don't want to discharge deep cycle batteries below 50% of their rated amp-hour capacity.

[randy_waterhouse]

That's perfect. I've already got a quiet gennie and a battery charger, so I can juice up the battery as needed, and will be calculating my total amp hours of light/power in use once I decide on whether I should be building a clock spring mechanism for the motion components or using DC motors geared to slow motion.

Thank you all!

[Captain Goddammit]

Calculations are a good thing, but I'd recommend doing some actual load testing with all your lights and whatever you're powering, that's the only way to really know how all the variables stack up.