a while (close to a year) i asked around here about recomondations for a led controller and leds. JP Roy (i cant include that guy properly) was very helpfull.
I ended with a Teensy 3.2 with a octows and some WS2812 LEDs.
Now i tested my setup and it seemed to work properly. Unfortunatly the leds starts to die one after the other. Can it be that this happens from the low China quality or am i killing them somehow?
can i kill them programatically?
If you have a voltmeter or multimeter handy, check that the supply isn’t putting out more than around 5.5 volts (I don’t trust sources that say these LEDs can handle up to 7v), that would likely cause slow death especially when running bright colors (high power dissipation) like you show in the picture. If the supply is good, then it’s possibly heat issues, so look into using setBrightness() to reduce the global brightness of the strip.
okay thanks i will check all of this… what is ment by cap? a capacitor?
Actually i^m not realy a electricity guy i1’m more a programmer
I figured out some other strange stuff…
if i apply preasure to the dead led it starts to work again and so the whole strip.
2.i have a relais to control the airpump you see in the picture. so after i ddin’t understand why leds where dying i startet figuring out what is needed to do so the relais starts to change it’s state. So i programmed a on/off algorithm with a delay of 7 secs.
i had the data line unplugged of the octows.(so no dataline connected)
but all of the suddon when te relais turned off some random leds startet to light in random colors. and again and again every 7 secs some changes in the stripe with no connection to the data line. any explonations what i did wrong there?
“if i apply pressure to the dead led it starts to work again…”
That sounds like it could be bad solder joint. You might try and resolder that pixel, or you might need to cut it out of the strip.
Yeah its a les stripe… So the soldering wasn’t mine… And why they keep comming on different places? I have done several cut outs at the beginning because i thought. Its something like that. Or just bad pixels who die because of i don’t know what. But now they keep diyng one by one so ill check the voltage of the suppply if it delivers contant 5 volts or not. And i will bring down the brightness a bit.
For sure i have a voltagedrop issue on the top of the table… there are 3m of leds… and if i light them in white the last meter get’s into a yellow.
I’ve had the same “press on a pixel and the whole thing works”. It prevented me from finishing a Christmas display. I suspect bad soldering on the four LED/pixel connections to the strip or, more likely, something faulty with the thin copper strips in the strip.
I cut and replaced the bad LEDs, only to end up with more as time went on. Replacing meant taking down a whole segment (up to 3-meters long), cutting the silicone holding the strip to the metal segment, cutting open the protective tube, cutting out and soldering in an LED, sealing it back up, reinstalling the strip. I eventually just turned it off for this year.
I will probably try and create 10-LED segments with connectors, and use clips to hold them to the aluminum segment instead of silicone. That way I can remove a small section and replace it with a backup or put in a jumper cable so things can keep running during the repair.
@Severin_N just one thing to note. When you turn off the relay, the magnetic field in the relay coil collapse and this generates a high voltage spike, which could damage your electronics.
Place a diode accross the relay coil to mitigate this.
@allanGEE i had a total of 15 meter of the stripes and once ws 2812 and ws2812b leds and both of them show the same issue. I did the cutouts on the begining because i thought its because of the soldering to or because of some bending. But now they keep apearing without moving the strip. Moving and preasure fixes the problem but i can’t beliefe it’s just bad soldering. or how should i figure out when i have all of them. i like to glue them on the alumium profile prepared. so i don’t want to remove them frequently after this
@Stuart_Taylor what is meant with accross? the relais is 230v but controlled with 5v this to be properly separet from each other.
@Severin_N In my case, I suspect changing temperatures caused enough contraction and expansion to reveal weak points. It IS possible that the individual LEDs are faulty. When I get a moment, I’m going to make a test harness, so I can run an entire reel of LEDs indoors for a week or more and see if anything “wears out”. If not, then it’s probably the temperature change.
@Thomas_Runge No thats fine… it worket for a while and started to die so i’m happy to test anything…but i have some troubles finding a cap with 1mF can’t i just apply directly to the supply a big cap instead to every led strip?
What i found for example was e rad lxz 25/1k0a would that work?
