APA102 Flickering

Issues
1

I have 4 strips of APA102 LEDs attached to an ESP32, with null pixels at the controller, then roughly a 2m distance between the controller and the strips.

3 of the strips work just fine, but one of them has flickering issues. This particular strip happens to be the longest one of the 4, at 168 LEDs in length. It can be seen flickering when running at lower brightnesses most easily, and doesn’t seem to flicker when running at full brightness. When the segment is turned off in WLED, the strip continues to flicker red very dimly. It does change colour as set in WLED, and effects do play, but flickering can be noticed still.

I’m using a good quality 5V 10A power supply, so I don’t think this is a supply issue, and since the other strips work without issue, this also suggests that the power supply is fine.

Below is a video of the issue occurring. What could be the problem here? An suggestions would be welcome.

2

Just for fun, try moving the MCU up so the data distance is veeeeery short.

Worth a try to see if anything else is an issue.

3

You also might need some power injection at 168 5v leds.

4

I’ll give this a try.

5

Power is being distributed amongst the strips at each hub between the hexagons in the design. It looks like this on the other side:

1536×2048 247 KB

6

It turns out the issue I was having was due to voltage drop. My PSU was quite far from my controller, and even further from my LEDs. I should have measured the voltage at the LEDs :man_facepalming:

I moved my PSU closer, and the problem was resolved.