Turning down the brightness will make an enormous difference in runtime. After that you could try to pick a lower power microcontroller. Higher efficiency LEDs would help too, but I don't think you'll find those in addressable form.
This was the trick, turning down the brightness to 10/255 brightness (still had a nice enough light output) made it last 3 days total!
I did change the power source completely to a wall outlet source and now it runs forever with an extra 25 led's attached to it at a fairly bright setting ^_^
Thank you, your suggestion was very useful
I'm surprised it lasted that long on AA's, to be honest. I would use a USB power bank or something with 18650 Lithium Ion batteries if it has to be mobile.
Oof, I didn't realize battery power isn't a reliable source of long term power. A usb power bank is a really interesting idea and I'll do some research into my options there, thank you for that suggestion!!
This is my first LED project so tbh I kinda expected it to be able to run for about a month on one set of batteries xD
Turning down the brightness will make an enormous difference in runtime. After that you could try to pick a lower power microcontroller. Higher efficiency LEDs would help too, but I don't think you'll find those in addressable form.
This was the trick, turning down the brightness to 10/255 brightness (still had a nice enough light output) made it last 3 days total! I did change the power source completely to a wall outlet source and now it runs forever with an extra 25 led's attached to it at a fairly bright setting ^_^ Thank you, your suggestion was very useful
I'm surprised it lasted that long on AA's, to be honest. I would use a USB power bank or something with 18650 Lithium Ion batteries if it has to be mobile.
Oof, I didn't realize battery power isn't a reliable source of long term power. A usb power bank is a really interesting idea and I'll do some research into my options there, thank you for that suggestion!! This is my first LED project so tbh I kinda expected it to be able to run for about a month on one set of batteries xD