Noobie question:
I’m building an LED chandelier for a burning man installation.
I want to run long stretches of wire between my microcontroller and the led strips, so I can keep the electronics down on the ground in a waterproof box.
To test, I used a 1m dotstar (ada102) strip. I connected the data and clock lines to 100 feet of 16 awg wire, and connected those to the led strip on the other end.
With lines that long, I just got a bunch of random colors on the strip. There was definitely a lot of noise.
Any ideas for how I can get the data up to the chandeliers (which will be hanging from the roof of a 32’ geo-dome) without too much noise?
Thanks!
There are a bunch of things at play. What micro-controller are you using? Does it have 3,3v or 5v logic? what ferquency are yo uusing for SPI for the APA102 strip?
I’m using a Teensy 3.2. There is a 5v level shifter to bring up the outputs from the teensy up to 5v. The frequency is 2 MHz. I found that anything more than 2 MHz results in glitches at the end of a 2m+ strip. Thanks!
for the data/clock lines I would use cat-5 cable (put data/ground on a twisted pair, and then clock/ground on another twisted pair).
Oh that’s a great idea! I’ll try that out and see how it goes.
every APA102 has an internal signal former. You could place one LED every 5m in the twisted pair cable.
@Daniel_Garcia worked brilliantly, thanks! 