Hi everyone, having an issue with a new-ish WLED setup.
WLED: 0.13.2
Board: ESP32 WROOM - Amazon AZDelivery 3 x ESP32-DevKitC
Power: 2 x 200W 12v Meanwell PSU
LEDs: Some type I’ve not seen commonly before- 12v, individually addressable, backup channel type tape. - WS2811 compatible ( ‘LC8808/UCS1903’ it claims - 12V Pro Bright Digitally Addressable LED Tape | UltraLEDs )
Issue:
There are 900 LEDs in the run.(it’s a run of about 50, a short break (maybe 50cm),the next 800, another 50cm, then the last 50). If I select 650 LEDs in settings, the tape will partially light up. If I select 670 or higher then there will be no output whatsoever from LED and the whole strip is unlit.
Connected from Pin D16. 12v → 5v buck convertor to power ESP32 and SN74AHCT125N level shifter. 4-5m for data line until first pixel.
I’ve had a brief dabbling of WLED in the past. It used to work fine about 2 years ago in the same setup until my ESP board blew (so an earlier version of WLED, I didn’t have a level shifter then either and I had a few flickering problems), however, I didn’t have time to fix it, so I switched to an amazon SP105E type ‘magic led’ controller. https://www.amazon.co.uk/SP105E-Controller-Supports-Controllers-General/dp/B07V9D9GZV. This works fine now, and I know all the LEDs can be powered successfully with no issue, and the hardware itself is wired ok and the power supplies adequate. This has been in place for the last 2 years. Now I’ve had time to re-install WLED, ESP32, and level shifter.
If I select 670 pixels or greater, the data signal just cuts completely. The weird thing is if I increase the number of LEDs, (from the default of 30) I see the line growing and growing, but it gets darker and darker as the line grows - could this be a setting that needs to be changed, like maximum current?
Question 2, slightly off topic - I used to have the same setup above, and I would put a data line in parallel with another set of LEDs (to mirror the data line) - there was no level shifting setup at the time, however it would flicker and glitch all the time - is this because the voltage would be dropping too low when the data line was duplicated in parallel? Many thanks so much for your help, I find this so interesting and fascinating!