Hi there, I'm working with a strip of cool white Adafruit APA102 LED.

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Hi there,

I’m working with a strip of cool white Adafruit APA102 LED. I cannot find any documentation on driving them and figure it should be the same as driving RGB? Having tried the standard simple tests like ‘dotstar_blink_test’ I’m only lighting the first or sometime 3rd LED. Any suggestions or help v welcome thank you!

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Ah… a bit more digging and found this: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B7qDeotgksZVNEMwSWw1ZzdrNnM/view

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and this suggests treat WWW as RGB https://forums.adafruit.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=86754

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It’d be helpful to see the code you’re actually trying to run - can you post it on pastebin or http://gist.github.com?

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Hi Daniel,

Many thanks for your response.

I tried adapting the FastLED Firstlight example here: https://gist.github.com/Fiddian/08b0aaaf37ac6456274a

I’m using and Arduino Uno (tested two, with same result) Arduino 1.6.7 on OSX. Hardware SPI clock on Pin13 Data on Pin 11. I’ve tried two different strips a few randon LEDs lighting.

I also tried simple Adafrui test code is here: https://gist.github.com/Fiddian/5c7174f4995c5f379211

Same result!

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I can’t see how the Firstlight example (using FastLED) is going to work if the pin definitions are commented out. Actually, that would be the same with the Adafruit one as well.

So, make sure you know which pins are used for what, and make sure that the definitions aren’t commented out.

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@Andrew_Tuline if you are using the hardware spi pins on hardware that defines a single set of hardware spi (or at least has a single default pair of pins) you don’t need to define data/clock pin in the addLeds call (as opposed to , say, the nrf51822 that allows you to use hardware spi on any pin combination)

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Hi Andrew and Daniel, Thanks for you comments. It was my understanding if using hardware SPI there was no need to define. I did try defining 11 Data and 13 Clock but had the same result.I do have a hunch data isnt getting though as when I cycle the power the same couple of LEDs come on.

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Sorry, I wasn’t aware of the SPI configuration. I assume you know which is the ‘data in’ and which is the ‘data out’ on your strip. Many don’t.

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Yep, the big arrows give it away :wink:

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SOLVED! I thought maybe the first one or two LEDs were blown so hopped them off and went to resolder the wires on and found that the data and clock wires were switched over within the block of silicone goo used to plug the ends so yellow was going to data and green to clock. I resolded and all working perfectly! Not sure if anyone else has had this with the white Dotstars? But something to look out for.