I’ve been working on some relatively simple code for a project. It took me a while to finish the hardware, but I’ve finally got everything installed. I’ve got 5 strips of 150 LEDs along the branches 20 feet up in a beautiful oak tree in a park. My plan was to use a OctoWS2811 to distribute the signals to the 5 different strips. I had been working out my code with a single strip, so I knew that my math was correct, etc. However, I’m having trouble now that all 5 are wired up. I was expecting the signals to be put out from the OctoWS2811 as in the documentation: https://www.pjrc.com/store/octo28_adaptor.html However, I’m only getting some of the usable signals. I’ve swapped around the wiring to confirm that it’s not the strips or my potentially shoddy wiring.
My question is with the code:
FastLED.addLeds(leds, NUM_LEDS_PER_STRIP);
I notice that I don’t tell this code how many led strips I’m giving it. Is there any documentation on how to use FastLED with the OctoWS2811? I’m ultimately trying to figure out if the code is the problem of if my OctoWS2811 isn’t working correctly. I tried the OctoWS2811 sample code from the FastLED library and some of the outputs aren’t responding. Any guidance is appreciated.
In the meantime the strips each individually look great. I have a bigger power supply on the way (I had done my math poorly at first) and I hope to take some photos as soon as it gets installed later this week. Thanks for all of the help!
It would help if you showed more of your code - (use http://gist.github.com for that please - code inside of g+ posts/comments is a pain in the ass to read).
Have you tried any of the octows2811 example code directly to make sure things are working (e.g. Double check the soldering connections- alternatively you can use separate addLeds lines to test the connections without using parallel output).
Because of how octows2811 works, there are always 8 lines of output when using that driver with FastLED.
Thanks Daniel. Just the fact that when using FastLED with the Octo always results in 8 lines of output gives me a clue. I’ll do some re-jiggering of the code to account for that. My code is on my home computer, so I’ll post the code tonight… Now that everything is bolted to the side of the tree it’s definitely slowed down my progress. I only have my self to blame for that though. I’ll upload some test code from Octows2811 to check if it’s a hardware problem. Once again, thanks for the help.
My computer has been acting up (laptop charging issues) so I didn’t get to play around with the code or with testing last night. But here’s the code right now: https://gist.github.com/cogzoid/392ea78fd3ffb3ef90cb33bf57077c6b
https://gist.github.com/cogzoid/392ea78fd3ffb3ef90cb33bf57077c6b
I changed to code to reflect the fact that FastLED was expecting all 8 LED strips to be plugged in. Everything is working great now. Thanks for the help! I’ll take some photos and upload them soon.