Not expecting these effect results

Issues
1

Hello,

I am new to forum as well as to LED lights. Since I am new, I started off small to get a grasp of the concept and understand the level of effort that is needed.

In short, I am having issues with the effects on WLED and is behaving not as expected. I do get everything to work but just not producing the results. One point I was getting flickering but based on one post, I shortened the data cable from a 4ft length. The flickering is no longer happening however I am getting behaviors such as these.

This one is on Solid mode and should be displaying a yellow color. Notice it is changing colors, brightness changes, and some pixels are off.

Solid Mode

This one is the Merry Christmas and should be displaying Red and Green and I see the pattern on the app. This is obviously no where near that.

Merry Christmas

Here is the hardware I have. Currently I only have two (2) 12V WS2811 but during the video, I only had one of them hooked up.

  1. Meanwell LRS-350-12 Power supply
  2. ESP8266 NodeMCU
  3. BINZET DC Converter Step Down Regulator 5V

All cables are 18-22 gauge for the exception of the jumper wires.

Here is a wiring diagram I created to show how I have everything wired.

Wiring
Wiring1104×581 97.8 KB

What I have in the diagram is what I originally started off with but I moved the 12V wires that go to the LED’s to the BINZET step down and piggy backed off the 12V to see if that makes a difference.

In the app, pretty much everything is default. I do have the LED light count at 50 since I am working with one at the moment.

I am not sure if this falls into the common category of using a lever shifter or not but I figured I get a direction before going down rabbit holes.

Are there any other suggestions with the hardware that I have such as switching to 5V LEDs or using a different board that is 12v compatible?

2

Connect both ground wires on this device so the LED strip and NodeMCU have the same 0V reference.

2 Likes
3

Thank you @huggy-d1! That was it. I appreciate it!

1 Like
4

I would get rid of the 12 to 5 converter and put 12v on the vin pin. This will also solve the issue. Problem I have with what you did is that, if the step down converter had ground isolation then you are bypassing the intended isolation.

If you wish to power the nodemcu with5v then I would get a step down converter that has a common ground.

5

Many boards won’t survive 12v on vin. None that I know of are rated for it. Many step down converters have the grounds connected internally. If this one doesn’t, you can connect them externally.

6

Apologies for resurrecting old threads. I don’t know why mobile version seems to put old threads up top. But maybe this will save someone from letting the magic smoke out of their boards.