LED Flickering after a few minutes - WLED using Athom controller and WS2811 DC24V

Hardware
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Greetings to everyone! Hope ya’ll having a great day.

I am facing some issues with my WLED project. Everything seemed to work for a while, after it was finished we left it run for several hours and it all worked correctly.
However after a while, the LED strips started flickering. Even if it’s on low brightness, or if I reduce the number of pixels ( 5leds/ pixel /10cm ) the flickering continues. It appears as random parts and lengths of the LED strip flashing in different colors ( when set on a constant color ) but this behavior repeats itself even while using effects ( audio or non-audio)

Let me explain the details:
Here are the specifications of the hardware we used:

Pre installed WLED ESP32 controller from ATHOM- Link below

BTF-LIGHTING WS2811 DC24V 10M Addressable RGB LED Strip 600 LEDs https://www.amazon.de/-/en/gp/product/B07X42467V/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?smid=A29559WHI6ZTR8&psc=1

Power supply - LED dedicated 350W 24V power supply

The implementation looks as followed:

We have a pentagon shaped room. 5 walls. There is a pentagon shaped island in the middle going all the way up on the sealing.

There is a main 240 W cable in this island ( no grounding, only +and- ) from witch we used WAGO to spread out 5 ends.

Each wall has it’s own power supply and controller. The LED strip than starts from the bottom of the island, goes all the way up the sealing towards the exterior wall and than comes down on the exterior walls. Thus we have 5 Controllers , 5 power supplies and 5 LED strips.

The reason we went with the 24V LED strips was to make sure we can supply the LED strip without power injection, each strip having a bit over 10 M. ( 10-12 M)

The freaky part is that, once one of the walls ( LED strips) starts flickering, shorty it’s as if it would make the other ones go crazy as well. Sometimes 1 or 2 walls get stabilized. usually after leaving it of for a day and starting it again the next day. After 10 minutes or so, slowly but surely 3 or 4 out of the walls will start flickering.

I can’t find any explanation. We tried switching the controller positions thinking that one of the controller might be faulty , but after a while it still goes crazy.

I’ve checked the settings for the power consumption and calculated as followed :
For 10 M LED at 180 W , I have set the max power output in WLED LED PREFFERENCES to 7.5 A. and used a custom setting for power/led inserting 75 ma/ led ( this is for 5 LEDs- 10 cm section working as 1 pixel )

I’ve preveousely left it on the standard settings for the WS281X.

We had only 1 point with faulty soldering that we fixed, but there the faulty part was clearly visible since the LED strip was interrupted there, or did not transmit the data channel ( effects were not going trough, only the power so it was still on) But still this behavior was totally different from the haotik color changes it is making now.

I’ve restarted and reinstalled the ATHOM WLED box at lest 20 times, configuring everything possible, than resetting again, wishing i found a magic button or setting. Not the case :frowning:

If anyone has any ideas what this might be about please help me out. I feel like I’m going crazy. We have been working for almost 2 months on this project and the fact that it worked for a while than stopped working properly is making me even more crazy.

If anyone can find a problem/solution I am willing to make it worth your time trough compensation.
Sorry for the long post. Wanted to put in as many details as possible!

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Here is an example of the behavior. The first LED Wal seems to be stable even after switching out the controllers between them. The other walls tough not so much.

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Check and make sure that all the grounds for each individual section of strips are connected to each other and to a common ground.

1 Like
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Also check KB FAQ for flickering.

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@MDspieler Having the same problem. Did you found a solution?

I used an esp32 (wemos) before for this setup and it was running fine. But for a cleaner solution I got an Athom.

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Update: Problem was solved.
We had the Power Supply Transformers installed by the owner beforehand. Looks like they used the power line set up for the lights, and it had only + and - ,no grounding (like the sockets should have)

So after connecting the transformers to proper +/-/Ground the flickering went away.

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Great news. I plan to use a similar setup with the strip you used. Would you share what type of LED channel and diffuser you use? Is it totally spotless? If you don’t know the exact type, what are the specs of the channel (width, depth…) ? I’m also curious to know what solution you use for non-perpendicular bends. Soldering? Thanks in advance.

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Hello there,

We used a 2 cm x 2 cm x 100 Channels . Aluminium channel with white semi transparent plastic typically used for LED strps . The deeper the channel is, the better the diffusion will be for that rainbow matrix effect, We used stuff from our local stores … Our version came out slightly dotted but, the owner actually preferred it like this . As a workaround , you might be able to add extra diffusion by cutting slices of Baking Paper ( White ) and add it on the acrylics… This is an old photo shooting trik but it might work for you. . In this case tho it would be recommended to seal the paper off with epoxy or something due to it’s flammability .

For the cuts we used a mainstream angle cutter you can get from your local home depot. . It should enable you to cut 22,5 and 45 degree angles , everything els was hand fit . As for the sodernig, we had around 400+ done for 75 meters of led.

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Hello,

Thanks for the info.