I’m here to announce that purchasing any Athom Tech WLED products will result in a significant loss in your time and productivity.
My hope was that, since they are one of the very few brands who are selling all-in-one boxes (wled, sound, variable voltage 5-24, ir, etc, in a nice container with a button) that it would be a good product, not just a good list of things that would be great to have. Hopes dashed.
Most of my experience has been with their addressable controller, but I’ve also had busted products with their addressable/analog hybrid controller, as well as with their 7w bulbs.
The TLDR is: You have a high percentage chance of receiving malfunctioning equipment because either their QC department is nonexistent or their circuitry engineering is half-assed or their components are garbage.
Here are my statistics on products ordered and rate of malfunction:
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22 Addressable Controllers
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1 Shorted the first time I powered it on and never powered back on
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8 have exhibited the multi-color bad data signal issues which are rampant in these threads for various reasons. I have tested every which way to ascertain that it is the controller and not wiring, LED hardware, wiring distance, interference, house power problems, powersupply malfunction, etc.
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Success rate: 59%.
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Wasted $250 and countless hours trouble shooting.
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3 Addressable/Analog Hybrids
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1 Functions correctly, except that it reboots 5-10 seconds after calling any effect while trying to run a SINGLE 5V RGBW LED in analog mode. Have tried various firmwares up and down, have tried every setting and every variance of settings. I tested one of the other two functioning controllers on the exact same LED, and it functioned fine.
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The other two do technically function, although for some reason on one of them, while I can upload and view custom color palettes, actually enabling them with any effect or preset does not have the desired color results, and instead seems to either mess up the effects called, or trigger undesired colors, mostly white and red and orange, which also animation-wise don’t correspond to the called effect. Pre-installed palettes work just fine, custom palettes do not. (all of my uses require custom palettes, so this is a deal breaker). Again, tried every version of settings, reloaded palettes and rebooted several times in several firmwares, no look.
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Success rate: 66% KINDA, but really because of the palette issue, 33%.
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2 7W WLED bulbs
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1 Crashed and burned when trying to update firmware. Went into some standby mode where it just flashed orange, off, red over and over. AP would not load, reset sequence did seem to reset the bulb, but only into the color sequence I described. The chip that they have inside the bulb seems entirely inaccessible without breaking the boards themselves to get to the pins, so gave up on that.
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1 successfully uploaded latest firmware, but same problem as above, did not have any success implementing custom palettes, so this device is useless to me.
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Success rate: 0%
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Tale of the Addressable Controllers:
The majority of what I’m attempting to procure controllers for is to retrofit various LED lights that I already had (primarily Govee Products). When I first began the process, the very first controller I unboxed caused a 6’ Neon-style strip to flicker up and down, and I spent a day or more researching and trying various power supplies and the shortest (think 3 inches from LED to controller) cable runs possible, etc etc etc, before I got frustrated and tried the next box and VOILA, it worked no problem. So I marked that box “bad? test.” After I went through the other 6 boxes (I had ordered 8 total this time), I had marked just one more “bad.” OK, 75% success rate? ehhh ok? is this normal? Must be a fluke right?
Because of the ease of the all-in-one set up process, I decided to take a chance and order more hoping that I had just gotten some bad apples. The next batch then 7 more failing units. By the way, included in that second round were 2 replacement units from the first round, ONE OF WHICH ALSO FAILED.
The problem definitely seems to be some sort of signal interference on the board itself. There’s a wild thing that occurs in most of the troubled units, in fact, where it will function perfectly fine on one area of table (have tested on SEVERAL surfaces and environments: wood, plastic, granite, bricks, etc), but move it a few inches, and it’ll go insane. Sometimes, a unit will function perfectly fine if I’m holding it, and freak out if I put it down—sometimes, the other way around. Some would fritz out only if I pick up in my right hand, but not my left. None of these behaviors are exactly repeatable or predictable. For example, I had one controller work for several days and through 3 different events where I was using it, and then suddenly it was all problems. The 8 that “failed” I consider unsatisfactory because they exhibit data corruption behavior within 10 seconds of powerup and do so consistently while powered on regardless of effect, palette, brightness, or LED type or voltage.
TROUBLE SHOOTING METHODOLOGY:
I tested and iterated all of the following potential failure points
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Wire Gauge
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Wire Length
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Data wire bundled with +/gnd or not
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Jst Connectors
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LED hardware
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Power supplies
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House Power Supply (Have tested at three different homes)
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Data voltage Drop (finally received the QuinLED data booster as my final test, and even with that, no luck).
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Cross testing various LED voltages, types, chips, etc, across the truly functioning units.
After all of this, I can confidently and frustratedly declare that these products are dogsh!t.
Will be hoping and praying that Gledopto doesn’t suck.
@ QUINDOR, I love your products so much, but can you please make the DigUno or a board of equal capability in a similar case? Most of what I use WLED for is temporary installations of LED units in homes and venues for parties and displays, and having a bunch of microchips and wires visible is just not a good look. I’d happily buy your superior product if I didn’t have to figure out some 3D printer or 3rd party case option for each unit.
Ok DON’T BUY ATHOM.
//End Rant.
Good luck everyone.
