ESP8266 with WS2811 IC LED Strip 3M 720LEDs/m 21W/M DC24V

I have a problem to get my setup to work the first IC shows different colours and the led´s of the hole stripe flicker…

Video

Level shifter is required for a strips 24V power. Other Hardware - WLED Project

Thanks for your answer but it worked with a 100 nf capacitor. I also understood that a level shifter is there to increase the voltage when you supply the strip with the ESP.

The mystery of the data level

Datasheet WS2812B

Needed data level of LED

Looking at the datasheet page 3 we see that the minimal voltage for a high level input is 0.7*Vdd . Vdd is the supply voltage of the LED, so 5V in this case. 0.7 * 5V = 3.5V

Data level output of ESP

The ESP can only output 3.3V.

Conclusion

The output of the ESP is in theory not high enough to drive the WS2812B LEDs. A levelshifter does fix that issue by changing the datalevel from 3.3V to 5V.

But it works without one in Video XY

As said above: " …in theory…". Values from the Datasheet and the reality are two different things. The values in the datasheet mean that it can garantee a good read of a HIGH level at 3.5V or more. It can work below 3.5V, but there is a chance does not get a good read.

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