So last night I was experimenting with my apa102 strip,

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So last night I was experimenting with my apa102 strip, and according to the multimeter, the data and clock receive no power on the strip. However the chip is pushing out voltage. Are these strips sometimes low quality and have bad connection?

Also, at first, the strip would blink slightly when I’d upload onto my attiny, and then just hold random color on very very low output on random leds.
After a while I lowered the strip to a set of ten, and nothing.

I can get the leds to light up on a single apa102 when I run power and scrape contacts a little (wanted to see if it worked at all). And it flickers.

Originally, sometimes one led would turn white even though I was running the basic usage code for turning on red.

BTW, sorry, this might be out of order. I stayed up all night trying to get the programmer to have permission and a correct rule in ubuntu, then learning the code, then multimeter in everything, so I am definitely lacking some brain power.
Anyone have any insight?
Thanks

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You should not expect your multimeter to indicate anything useful when you probe the data or the clock. They are digital signal that toggle too fast.

You are probably having power supply issues here. Just make sure that you have a very solid +5V everywhere on your strip(s) !

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if i did, then what do i do? i was tracing the 5v on the strip all the way down.

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just verify that you get a very stable +5V everywhere when the strip is working.

I am only guessing that you are powering this from the USB and that you are not getting 5V maybe much lower ??

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I am powering from usb, but it seemed as if the voltage was 5 on every led. I checked each led. It was previously lighting up slightly, but now nothing. voltage seems stable. do you think i should try with a high amp usb battery pack?

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If you are getting a steady 5V even with every LED on full white you should be OK. You should not need another PSU or battery pack.

How many LEDS on your strip ?

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there were 60, then i cut it down to 10
and was playing with 1

im using an attiny85
and programming with a trinyavrprogrammer

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i set up my data and clock pin correctly (even used the data and clock pin according to the attiny pin guide)
running from the pinouts on the programmer that it has to test. after lots of trial and error, the strip would flash and flicker through colors then stop on low low power red. randomly sometimes it would show 1 led bright white.