I am getting RED flickers on my APA102 even when I disconnect the power line of the strip completely.
The flickering dissapears when I disconnect ground line of the strip. I’m attaching my setup, could someone help me understand what the problem can be?
Edit: Correct diagram is here: http://oi68.tinypic.com/29ooarb.jpg
I believe what’s happening is voltage from the Data line from the micro controller is leaking through the LED strip pixel circuity and causing the red LED to light up a bit. This is generally not a good thing for the pixel and can sometimes damage it.
To prevent this always power everything up/down all together, or power the LED strip on first and off last.
You are right that its the data line, I power them all together actually. I use a powerbank to power the strip and an arduino mega (not a nano as is in the sketch) all together.
Are you getting the red flickering even when everything is hooked up correctly?
How many pixels are you powering, and what are specs for your powerbank? Have you tried powering it with with a power source plugged into the wall?
Yes I have tried it with a mobile phone charger rated at 5v 3A. The project is mobile so I really need this to work with the powerbank.
I was also having problem with irregularly flickering leds when I’m using beatsin8 with a potentiometer to match the brightness to a beat … uint8_t bright = beatsin8(Pot3MappedOutputValue, DIMMEST, BRIGHTEST); . But only at some values the leds flicker randomly.
Something definitely wrong here but I need this project for a party saturday night (istanbul time) so I had to post here.
hm. Its not noticable in the Fritzing sketch but I’m powering Arduino & the Led Strip from the same powerbank. Could this be an issue?
my final project is as such actually: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/t2cBj4rtdK4vmxpQqRZiTdmfm6FcbCiSVRkhrVK1UjSQi6UcWW35FR1n_etASnFM46bx5hK-48M=w1920-h1080-rw-no
Did it work when you used the 5v 3A mobile phone charger?
How many pixels are you powering, and what are the specs for your powerbank?
It’s fine if you power the LEDs and your controller from the same power source. All grounds always need to be tied together, especially if you’re using two different power sources.
Make sure all your wiring connections are soldered well or firmly connected. A bad solder joint can mess things up.
Do things run properly with one of the basic FastLED example sketches?
If it’s your own code that is the problem then please post your code to pastebin or gist.
You could try lowing the data rate since you’re using APA102, something like this:
FastLED.addLeds<APA102,7,11,RGB,DATA_RATE_MHZ(8)>(leds,NUM_LEDS);
Also, double check you have the Data and Clock connected to the correct micro controller pins, and don’t have them backwards.
As per your picture I notice your connection to strip is wrong.
Connect DI & CI instead of DO & CO.
You are powering your µC through an output pin.
Disconnect the data line when the LED strip is powered down. You could damage the pixels or the output pins of your microcontroller if current is leaking into the LEDs.
The micro controller does not look grounded. And where are you injecting the power? As Jeurgen said, looks like you are pushing power in the wrong pin.
Hey folks after working on this for a few days, I’m still having the same problem.
All code seems to work OK except a some annoying flickering. Especially when running the code (pasted here: http://codepaste.net/h467og )which adjusts brightness according to the beat using a potentiometer. Some values of potentiometer works ok and the rest of the time it flickers nonstop.
All grounds are tied together.
I tried lowering the data-rate not much help.
DATA is on Arduino Mega pin 51
CLK is on Arduino Mega pin 53
I’m injecting power into the strip on the 5V, I updated the DIAGRAM IS here: http://oi68.tinypic.com/29ooarb.jpg
SO Basically:
The strip runs all code ok except rare flickering at times.
To check what might be wrong I checked the 5v power feeding the led strip. I attached a 2-pin toggle switch to the 5v feeding the led-strip, so when I turn off the toggle switch the led-strip would have nothing feeding, and thus it would be dark. However it’s not, I get random red-flickering when I turn off the togle switch, or when I manually disconnect that 5v wire that is feeding into the led-strip.
Apparently the DI line from arduino is feeding power into the strip. Because:
The red Flickering on the strip continues if I disconnect RED power line or Yellow clock line.
The red flickering stops if I disconnect Black ground line or Orange DI line.
Here is a photo of the problem. The powerline feeding the led strip is disconnected but there is still red flickering:
Hi,
As mentioned by others, the red flickering is from the strip being powered (under powered) through either the Data or Clock pins. My solution has been to put the strip into a ‘sleep’ mode prior to cutting power and I do this by setting both Data and Clock to LOW/GND/0. This way the only connections to the strip are ground. When I want to power it back up I then reapply power and restore Data and Clock to HIGH/+V/1. After that it will accept color data like normal.
One of my projects uses a load switch IC to cut strip main power so I can sleep it for a long time without draining the battery. Requires setting DA and CL LOW.
I need to do this in an analog way because I practically use the switch to cut power to the strip as a manual beat-matching mode. Do you think there is a way?
why not turn the lights all black/off to the beat? as opposed to analog power switching?
there is a continuing pattern in the background so when i simply cut the power off and give it back on, the strip continious more smoothly.
What about controlling the overall brightness setting? This can be set a a global controller level? You can continue to do your pattern and just control whether the pixel is showing its color or off.
