I am having an issue getting my IR receiver and remote to work correctly

Scott_Peterson · September 16, 2017, 7:03pm

I am having an issue getting my IR receiver and remote to work correctly with my code. I am using Jason Coons web server code. I have done nothing to it except change the pin for my LED strip to D5 on my D1 Mini and D4 of the IR receiver.

gist.github.com

https://gist.github.com/Clanggedin/2b2aea2d74085214982d8154cb02c2e1

gistfile1.txt

/*
   ESP8266 + FastLED + IR Remote + MSGEQ7: https://github.com/jasoncoon/esp8266-fastled-webserver
   Copyright (C) 2015 Jason Coon

   This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
   it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
   the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
   (at your option) any later version.

   This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,

This file has been truncated. show original

When I press a button on the IR remote it causes my LEDs to flicker, and I get no color change so I know I have the right pin selected (D4). But I have no idea why that is happening.

I am using a remote compatible with the code as it is the eTopxizu 44Key IR Remote listed and cut the IR receiver cable from the box it is shipped with.

Any suggestions why this would be happening? I am using Jason’s wifi LED controller and have the pin connected to “I” on the side where D4 should be. It is connected just how it is shown in the photos on the following page:

https://evilgeniuslabs.org/wifi-led-controller#assembly-options

Not sure what else I can try as I get the same flickering when I try other D7 and D6.

Marc_MERLIN · September 16, 2017, 10:19pm

I just explained the problem in another similar question, read the archives. Short story, it won’t work with fastled

Scott_Peterson · September 16, 2017, 10:49pm

I forgot you mentioned that in another post. It didn’t come up in my last archive search. I also think the issue has to do with the 3 pin LED strips as that is mentioned to cause problems in the fastled IRDEMO code. No worries… I drop that part of my project and continue on.

Franck_Marcotte · September 18, 2017, 2:14pm

To use IR remotes with FastLED you need to use APA102 leds. WS2812 uses interrupts and it doesn’t mesh well with IR.

Marc_MERLIN · September 19, 2017, 1:00pm

Correct, LEDs that have their own clock line (i.e. 4 pin LED strips) should work fine since they don’t care about exact timing and interrupts. Sadly, they cost more and are harder to find (all projects I got that already had LEDs were neopixels, not the better ones).
Either way, you can still do IR with neopixels, you just need to use the I2S library which is barebones, but will do the job

Jason_Coon · September 19, 2017, 3:10pm

Sorry for the delayed response, I missed this post somehow. I have had very limited success using three wire LEDs with IR control on ESP8266. It usually works fine on Teensy 3.x. I need to add a warning to my site and github repos about that. I’ve gotten it working intermittently, with different combinations of FASTLED_ALLOW_INTERRUPTS and FASTLED_INTERRUPT_RETRY_COUNT, but it often requires multiple presses of the remote buttons. Changing the CPU speed to 120 Mhz seems to help.