So, this is sorta related to the group. After a lot of trial and error, I’ve discovered that having my LEDs on (my Christmas tree and mini-holiday village are lousy with em) actually prevents my garage door from working.
As nutso as it sounds, when the strip is plugged into the Arduino, I can’t open my garage door with either of my remotes. The best I can figure from bits and pieces off the net is some sort of RF egress interference. Trouble is, I have no idea how to counter it. Anyone have any suggestions? Or even come across this problem themselves? It’s kinda maddening.
That’s weird How is the garage door controlled? Do you have any kind of remote on the arduino? Which arduino? What power supply are you using for the LEDs? Have you tried with the power to the LEDs switched off but with the controller on?
Sorry for all the questions…
I actually have the exact same problem with the FSM. The hardwire opener works just fine, but when the lights are on, the remotes don’t work very well at all. No idea what’s going on.
It’s an arduino uno with a 9 volt wall wart for power. I have a proto shield running 2 small lengths (88 and 10) of ws2812b off the 5v rail. No capacitor since they aren’t directly powered. I did a sanity check and disconnected the leds but still ran the arduino and the garage remotes worked fine.
I don’t know the specs of the garage door, but I’m assuming it’s basic rf tech any 20 year old garage door opener would use.
My lights are only gonna be up another week or so, so it’s not likely I’ll go through any sort of complicated fix. I might just try splicing the door’s antenna to be closer to the end of the garage to pick up the signal better.
Like I said, no caps. One cap per LED seems excessive though. I won’t know for sure until later, but I pulled a snap-fit ferrite core off an old PS3 controller and put it on one of the lengths and I THINK that did the trick, or at least helped the problem.
If you have any mylar film around, you might try using that around your controller or whatever is housing it which helps trap and contain RF. There are also RF paints you can buy, but mylar is the cheapest and quite effective for a quick job and is also easy to use for a quick test before trying more expensive solutions.
Could it be caused by a ground loop on the strips? I noticed some interference on an AM Radio when I had a large number of strips running on the eaves of the house, but didn’t have time to experiment. I was guessing the power supply or an inadvertent ground loop – again, no time to check yet.
The ferrite is fast cheep solution. This more then likely is the COM line I would try turning on lights then disconnect com line they should freeze at last command and see if this helps. This is known issue with also home LED light bulbs big issue for HAM’s.
The ferrite core only sorta worked, but not well enough to be a viable solution. The season is almost over and the lights will get put away for another year, so I’ve got some time to figure out it fully.
A couple of years ago I put a cree 60 watt equivalent led bulb in my garage door opener and noticed the same problem whenever the light was on. This Christmas I hung rgb led light strings around the windows and over the garage door and now have to stand right in front of the door for the remote opener to work when the lights are on.
How is the garage door controlled? Do you have any kind of remote on the arduino? Which arduino? What power supply are you using for the LEDs? Have you tried with the power to the LEDs switched off but with the controller on?