Hi everyone, I have created the firewalker shoes based on the tutorial from Adafruit and am running into an issue that I can’t figure out.
When the board (Flora) and led strip (WS2812B 42 leds) is powered through the battery connector everything works as intended but if I have the board powered through the USB connection the first 8 or so leds will light up a solid color and stay on and nothing will work as expected.
It happens when powered through my laptop or by an external battery pack commonly used for recharging cell phones.
Also, I am not using the FastLED library with this project but hope someone has maybe run into this issue and can help me out.
Switched the code over to Mark’s colorwaveswithpalettes to test. The first couple pixels light up and then everything else eventually comes on but it is very glitchy. I’ll try to get a video to show you.
Yes it is 3.3v but they say you can use up to 6v. I just find it weird that it works fine on an extra board I use to test things but doesn’t work on my 2 completed shoes. I am able to successfully run some fastLED demos using USB power while some demos act the same way as the firewalker code I’m using.
I was just reading that adafruit never intended the board to be powered through the USB connector so I guess I’ll just find another work around. Thanks for the help.
Using it “up to 6v” doesn’t necessarily mean the device you’re communicating with will be happy with the same standards.
I’d recommend testing a simple digital write voltage and compare it to your battery voltage.
I think the threshold is 70% of VCC to be considered a logic high for WS series chips (I may be woefully incorrect on that number so please don’t quote me on it haha).
(70% of 5.5v is 3.85v so you may be just under that threshold… assuming 70% is correct)
+1 on the level shifter, didn’t need one on my teensy but I ended up installing one for safety.
You can also try using an LM series regulator to drop the voltage down the VCC for the pixels a small amount for debugging. They’re a hot running chip especially with the amount of power you can draw with the pixels so it probably wouldn’t be suitable for an installation, but that’s neither here nor there, gotta get the thing running first
Can either of you suggest a reputable website to order one of the level converters from? I want to make sure I get one of good quality and thanks again for the help.
