I can't seem to get even the basic "blink" to run on my Uno.

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21

No luck changing to SK9822.

Here is the code from the Adafruit Dotstar test.

22

Ok - that was kind of a Hail Mary idea - the other Hail Mary idea is to swap the clock and data PIN numbers for laughs, but I’m not holding my breath on that helping (just a completist thing). One other other thing to try possibly is:

FastLED.addLeds<APA102, DATA_PIN, CLOCK_PIN, RGB, DATA_RATE_MHZ(1)>(leds, NUM_LEDS);

And see if that helps at all (in case the problem is that we’re driving the SPI clock too fast for how the leds are wired up - APA102’s can be a pain about this, which is frustrating, because I’ve been able to run them at as high as 32Mhz SPI clocks in some configurations). When I get home from work tonight I’ll try finding an uno again at home to see if i can get a test setup running to try out, since the Mega2560 is working fine for me in a variety of pin configs with your software/library versions.

23

I just ran my new product test sketch on an Arduino Uno R3 (which I never use anymore) using FastLed 3.1.6 on Windows 7 running NeoPixels. It worked fine.

Here is the sketch that I used:

Unfortunately, I do not have any DotStars or APA102s to test.

The new update of FastLED works correctly like FastLED always has for me on my Uno R3.

24

Just tested a genuine Arduino Uno r3, and a strip of genuine APA102s, and a fresh copy of FastLED 3.1.6, and it looks to me like it all works okay. missing/deleted image from Google+

25

I’m perplexed, particularly because it’s working okay with one library and not at all with the other.

I get the same result whether I explicitly specify the pins (e.g. 3 and 4, as shown in the photo), or let it implicitly use 11 and 13; both setups work okay on this board, with these LEDs, and FastLED v3.1.6.

I’m compiling with Arduino 1.8.1, which includes avr-gcc 4.9.2.

26

@Phil_Spitler - I noticed that you are using the color correction RGB in your sketch with FastLED. Sketches by @Erin_St_Blaine and @Jason_Coon with DotStars and FastLED use the color correction BGR. Could this be part of your problem?

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@Ken_White that would only affect whether or not the color he was seeing was the color he was expecting - but he’s been saying that he’s getting nothing lighting up.

28

OK, I tried on my hardware (genuine Arduino Uno R3, genuine APA102 strip) and the latest Arduino IDE (1.8.3) and the latest Adafruit Dotstar library, and the sample code that @Phil_Spitler posted, and it all works fine. It also works fine with FastLED v3.1.6.

@Phil_Spitler : could you post some photos of your hardware setup so we can see all of the wiring and the exact hardware configuration? I feel like that’s the only thing that might be different at this point, but I’d like to see. Thank you!

29

Here is the hardware setup. Thanks

missing/deleted image from Google+

30

Did you try the lower data rate?

31

Yes, i just tried lowering the data rate and also swapping the data / clock lines.

Still nothing…

The strip does do some random blinking while the code is uploading if that’s any clue…

32

It isn’t - and I’m almost out of ideas for things to try - with neither mark or I able to recreate it with any combination of hardware here, it’s tough to debug. Are you comfortable enough with code to try making some changes to - do some serial output to make sure that the loop of code is running and such. (Not sure why it wouldn’t be - but that’d be something else to check).

33

Yup, no problem, let me modify my sketch.

I’ll also try the same sketch with the Adafruit library and report back.

I

34

Ok, the loop is running ok and I moved the sketch over to using the adafruit library. It worked on the Adafruit but not the FastLed.

So weird.

I also tried a bunch of the other examples from the FastLED library and non of them worked.

I do plan to move my project over to the Feather m0 which worked great with FastLED but this is just bugging me now :slight_smile:

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Phil

35

Ok… here is something interesting.

I switched the data line from pin 11 to pin 3

Now I get something different, an LED part way down the strip is flashing, not blinking with a 500ms delay as the sketch is supposed to.

the Adafruit code still works as expected if i use pin 3.

36

Ok… here is the weird thing… I just tried another APA102 strip (from the same roll). and it worked perfectly with FastLED and the Adafruit library.

The original strip only works with the Adafruit library… both have the same wiring…

Weird… unexplainable but a least I have it working now.