Hi!
I have a string of 450 12v pixels being driven by an ESP32 board running the latest 0.10.x version of WLED. I’m using a Meanwell 12v 29A power supply to power both the ESP32 and the lights. I’m injecting power at about 200 pixels, then again at 300 pixels and again at 350 pixels.
When turning it on, if the brightness is set at 50% (default for me I think), only pixels 1 - ~305 get lit up and controlled The last couple pixels flash colors somewhat randomly. If I turn down the brightness to about 33%, then all the pixels that were previously “off” suddenly start blinking random patterns. If I turn the brightness down further to about 20% all of the pixels work perfectly.
Any idea what might be going on and how I can fix it?
Same issue with 0.11.0. I did notice some additional things when testing with the new version: If I set the effect to “Solid” and just choose white, and then set the brightness down to where they all turn “on”, the pixels after #305 ish aren’t white, they rotate through random colors. If, however, I turn on an effect like “Merry Christmas”, they seem to behave just fine, showing the right colors.
What is the max current setting? Try it at 0 for testing. Then set it to the correct value for your strip(s), and less than 29000 mA. I do not recall the max current setting’s max value, but if 29000 is too large, set it to 0 and use proper fusing to protect the system (hopefully you already are using fusing).
The specs for the lights say 15W per strand, I have 9, so that’s 1.25A per strand for a total of 11.25A. I’ve tried completely unchecking the “brightness limiter”, is that the same as setting the value to 0?
Also interestingly, the setting “LED voltage (Max. current for a single LED):” keeps going to “5V (default)” even thought I keep setting it to “12V (30mA)”.
Here’s a gif of the strand that contains lights 301-350, which when set at > 20% brightness doesn’t work at all. Here I’ve set the control to display white, and I’ve set the brightness to about 10%:
I should probably do this It’s just cold outside and I’m lazy
I run one injection wire about 30 feet from the power source and then branch off of this for each injection. If i have 450 lights and need 4 injections ideally, are you saying I should run 4 separate runs of cable (ranging from 15-30 feet) for each one, or is branching ok?
That website is amazing! For the fusing: my pixels use 20awg wire, where do I put the fuse? If I put it close to the power supply, won’t that injection wire experience more than 10A?
The fuse should ALWAYS be close to the power supply and BEFORE the pixels at it is there to protect the cable from overheating and causing fire! Use a seperate fuse for each power injection point.
If you have 20awg on your fuse you fuse to 20awg. Also, the 20awg could be choking down the current your 18 can carry.
On your picture you sited 20awg as pixel wire. If this is your case you should inject more frequently.
Here is my example, I have a singing face it’s 150 lights roughly. I had to inject 5 times. It was because I bought some cheap
Pixels and the pixel wire was tiny. On my mega tree I inject every 50 on my 5v pixels and no issue but I have 18awg pixels.
It’s just cold outside and I’m lazy
