Hey guys. I have a dig quad running a roof outline with 725 ws2811 bullet pixels on 1 channel. Been working great. I decided to add ws2815 strips on another channel for an outdoor kitchen… Each strip is 300 leds, I used about 1 1/4 strips at 400 leds on a separate channel. I ran a 3 wire cable from the dig quad to the beginning of the strip and connected the backup data wire to ground. I also ran a separate 14 gauge power cable and connected it to the beginning and end of the strip. I tested it and it worked perfect.
I went back and made my connections permanent and tested again. Now half the lights were not working past a splice I had. I used some left over strip on the downstream side of the splice to test since it was easier to work with since it wasnt installed and all the lights weht out. I went back to the board and could here a faint whine. The primary fuse was blown. I replaced it but not the board will not come back online. It has 1 orange light. It feels hot to the touch. Im assuming its fried Just want to know why before I put the new one in so I dont have the same issue. When I was messing with the connections I did disconnect and reconnect the strip to the connector with power applied. Maybe this is why? I cant see why the board would have fried since it was protected by a fuse.
Take the Esp32 off the quad and connect it’s usb port to like a phone charger or something and see if the Esp32 works. If it does it’s not fried. If you are hearing a wine from the shield board it could be a blown capacitor.
Maybe @Quindor will see this and might have more ideas.
I plugged it into a USB charger and it does not go on. I did take my dig Uno out from somewhere else and hook it up to the new strips. Once I got the loose connection corrected they work fine. I also hooked the digital up to my roof outline pixels. They all went on but seem to be doing whatever they want data wise. Maybe too many for the dig UNO to handle? They’re $725 on that line. I ordered a new dig quad. Just hoping the LEDs are okay
I had issues initially with the dig quad that was fixed by switching the resistor. This dig uno that I’m using temporarily to test doesn’t have it. The lights do power up and some effects works fine at lower brightness. I’m assuming the LEDs are prob ok?
Just noticed this topic! Not sure what could have killed the whole board when just adding a strip to it. We generally troubleshoot on the Discord server to see what might be going on!
But as I understand it taking off the ESP32 board to a USB cable also doesn’t make it come online anymore and you also can’t flash it? Then maybe just the ESP32 board died (did you maybe plug it back in misaligned? It’s not great at handling that).
If that part does still work though it’s more likely to be the Dig-Quad itself but we rarely see one of those die because of all the protection features that are on there. There are pin headers on the board for 5v and 3.3v, could you measure those with a multi-meter, we’ll be able to tell if the DC-DC circuit is still working with that.
