I need help determining if I have bad LED strips. I have very simple code that behaves different on Dotstar strips from Adafruit than APA102C strips from Ray Wu.
The code is based off of the FirstLight example and I have uploaded it to gist and added the link.
It boils down to me having to call FastLED.show() twice to get the strips from Ray Wu to light correctly.
I am using the following:
- FastLED v3.1
- Arduino 1.6.5
- Sparkfun Thing ESP8266
- Windows 7
I’ve been bitten by so many bad LED strips that it is very discouraging. I have never had problems with ones from Adafruit and was hoping ones from Ray Wu were of good quality. I need to determine quickly if I need to return them, I purchased hundreds of dollars worth…
Thank you folks.
Most likely what you have are SK6822’s which I’m seeing more and more people end up with when they’ve ordered apa102’s. You can drive apa102’s with the SK6822 protocol but not the other way around - I’m tempted to merge the definitions to keep this from popping up. Change your led type from APA102 to SK6822
Do you happen to mean SK9822? I googled sk6822 and there does not appear to be a clock signal on that chip… Thank you for your help, I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much! Problem is solved! Thank you, Thank you!
Ok, I spoke to soon, while changing the chipset from APA102 to SK9822 seemed to help with my fastLED.clear() command, my originally posted code still does not work correctly unless I call fastLED.show() twice. I have revised the simple example and recorded the behavior in the comments…
Does there happen to be another similar chipset to try?
Ok, an update. I’m still having the same problem, however I have definitively determined the LEDs are in fact SK9822s, I also have made sure they are running at 12 MHz…
This should be the last update, PROBLEM SOLVED!
Recap: Originally “APA102c” LED strip was glitchy.
Solution: (1) They were actually SK9822s, and (2) These particular strips couldn’t be driven over 10 Mhz.