I have a strip of WS2812 LEDs mounted on my camper. (Running WLED 0.14.0-b3) Since this will only be used while camping, there will be no WIFI available. (I have no current plans to put an access point in my camper) What I have found is that, with the access point running, there is lots of flickering. I know this has to do with the access point because when I allow it to connect to my home WIFI there is no flickering. I block WIFI by setting Network Name and password blank. Is there anything I can do about it? What do the “AP Opens” options do? There are 3 of them but no documentation of how each works.
I have no use case for AP but I just tried to test to replicate your issue by having SSID and password blank. I tried all the AP modes and with AP open i did not notice flicker ( i am testing on esp8266 and faced few glitches with slow connection when changing mode but no flicker on a small 8x8 matrix ) . If you think I could replicate that somehow then might be provide more details
I also kinda agree with you about the info not clear at least on one mode ( but given this is open source then might be you and I can do that ) . The last mode is not related to your use case but I will try it next if you are interested but I assume it is meant to prevent access to the device and I might need to reset the unit afterword .
More details: Using ESP32, Light strip has 164 5V LEDs, Controller is about 6 ft. from first LED, Separate power/ground wires run from controller to last LED, at max white brightness current is 7.5A, power supply rated for 10A. Voltage is not dropping out, I measure steady 5.1V at the controller input. Disconnecting the end wires makes no difference other than some dimmed pixels at the end. There is an electrolytic capacitor on the ESP32 power input. I have tried 2 different ESP32 boards. Using 74HCT125N level shifter. I have tried impedance matching resistors 51, 200, and 360 Ohms on the level shifter output. I have tried GPIO 2 and 16. AP Opens setting is “Always”
Flicker is not the best description of what I see. With solid color effect I see blocks of consecutive LEDs switching off and on every 3-4 sec. I do see a few wrong color pixels every once in a while but mostly I see the on/off flashing.
Not that I am an expert but this looks like some sort of interrupt issue. As if the frame data is being cut off before it finishes the burst.
What version of WLED are you running?
You seem to have a better setup then my test units as most are without level shifter and if your units are fine on your home router than might be something to look at . One test could tell if the issue is related to AP is to look at peek when connected to wled with a phone if you see flicker on peek then that is for sure a sw issue else might still be hw related
(Running WLED 0.14.0-b3)
I did watch the peek and did not see anything. I did try using some other LED strips I am running and did not see any flashing so apparently it is my LED strip? I have been using this strip for a while but running custom code I wrote using FastLED library. No issues with that.
The strip is the type with redundant data line and I have the 2 data lines shorted together at the first pixel. I will disconnect this next.
With redundant data, you ground the BI (Backup Input) line on the 1st LED.
It remains connected internally on all the others.
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Somehow this was the root of my issue. I soldered separate wires to the data lines and cleaned the connection with alcohol and a brush. Now I can connect the data lines separately or together and either way, there is no more flashing. Corrosion, contamination?
@divsys: Thanks for the info! At the time I bought that LED strip I found conflicting info on what to do with the BI input.
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