I’m building a 69x15 matrix in 3 sections of 5 lines. I had the first 4 lines of the first section running WLED patterns fine, and then something happened that I’m not quite sure of. As I was going to power off the matrix to solder the data line between lines 4 and 5, I think I accidentally brushed one of the white U-shaped data wires I was holding in my hand up against the live 5v wire solder joint of the 4th row. That’s my best guess. Anyway, whatever contact occurred at that moment brought my partially done matrix to an error state, as seen in the pix. The last lit LED is #67 of the first line, and then the only other two LEDs that are lit after that are light green, and hot to the touch (viewable in pics). I’ve confirmed that after this error, all 5 lines still have 5v power. Not sure where to go here other than seeing if replacing likely culprits on the run (the two green LEDs, and LEDs #68-69) does anything, but figured I’d post and see if anyone has a clear idea of what I did to my matrix, or what my best steps forward should be. Thank you!
PS: I’m only allowed one pic upload, so here’s the second pic.
At first blush, one or more strips have been damaged.
“Hot to Touch” is typically a bad sign for LEDs (and electronics) so I’d try and remove those from your tests.
Make sure you have 5V and only 5V on your strip(s). Over voltage kills LEDs veeery quickly.
Simplify your setup to 1 strip at a time that you test. Disconnect the data line between strips and check each strip individually for operation. Hopefully you’ll end up with most of the strips OK and a few that have issues.
Try and diagnose the issue strips by cutting out the known “BAD” LEDs (the always green ones) and seeing if the sections before and/or after the bad spot are salvageable.
Keep going till you think you’ve got all the good pieces figured out and start rebuilding.
@divsys Appreciated. Confirmed that everything is getting 5v. 5v out of power supply, 5v out of the SP901E signal amp. I’ll get to testing/trying to get each line working individually, which should isolate the problem spot(s). Thanks again.
