Solve all bad data issues

Hi all, I have been incredibly impressed with this community and @Aircoookie for the WLED software. I have been dabbling with WS28xx light strips for awhile and the one painful item is always the integrity of the data signal and the dreaded flickering segments. I decided to solve this issue once and for all and have created some circuit boards that are compatible with any of the custom or commercially available controllers and will theoretically preserve the data signal integrity for at least a 1km…I haven’t tested that distance because I don’t have a 1km of cat6 cable…
It’s not a new solution but it one I designed specifically for use for these light strips, it effectively is to convert the data signal to RS485 and then back to raw signal on the far end. I have tested the prototypes and they work great.
The design involves using cat6 cable to connect between the controller and the led strip (or between led strips if they are far apart). The transmitter circuit takes 5V or 12V input and uses that to power the MAX485 chip and then uses a standard RJ45 (ethernet) socket and cat6 cable to send the data and voltage to the receiver circuit (same at transmitter but configured with jumpers). The receiver circuit can either be powered by incoming voltage on the cat6 cable or by connecting 5V or 12V power at the led strip.
You won’t be able to push enough power through the cat6 to power the remote led strips so you will still need to use a separate power cable (you had to previously anyways).
In addition to this I have also created a WLED compatible WEMOS D1 Mini shield with the RS485 transmitter built in.
Let me know your thoughts on this.

1 Like

I like the thoughts for the first led, but what if I have flickering on led 100?

Great question…all the data for all LEDs will be preserved in the data stream so if you have an issue with LED 100 it is because the data stream is bad or LED 100 is bad…actually it might be an issue between LED 99 and LED 100…

Here are the views of the board. It isn’t very big at 55mm x 25mm. If anyone is interested in trying this out just let me know I can send you the gerber files and BOM.


1 Like

Nice looking board!!!

I’ve tested home made level shifters to about 14m from controller to first led without ever having any flickering issues. This project could be very useful on very long runs where normal data lines might absorb noise or drop voltage. I look forward to seeing it evolve.

Hi @Modelman , I have done the same thing but that solution is a “it may work” and is heavily dependent on how clean the power supply is and if the environment is generally RF noisy. When it works it works and when it doesn’t it is a nightmare. This solution should always work and by design is noise immune.
I will keep everyone posted on rev 2 of the board that I added input protection to so nobody lets out the magic smoke like I did…

I can also see your project working great in large Xmas setups where bundles of cables are running in close proximity, all potentially generating noise.

@D3IIOT – Did you ever complete your revision of this board? I have been looking at doing something similar recently, trying to solve for long wire runs without needing to put an amplifier or signal regenerator in the middle of the run. I simply want to go from an MCU (i.e. ESP32-WROOM-32E) to RS485 over Cat5e/Cat6 to the receiver connected to the LEDs. I would even be interested in making use of all the twisted pairs in the Cat5e/Cat6 cable for separate GPIO button controls.

Using an RS485 TxRx pair for the LED data stream (and/or TTL switch signals) is a good reliable approach.
There are many examples out there and the boards are pretty cheap (< $2 ).
Cat5e is perfectly acceptable for these types of data streams and should give you 150m+ distances for the data lines.

Thanks. I have bought and used the cheap RS-485 modules, soldering them to RJ45 breakouts. I have been hoping to find something like @D3IIOT proposed that can be extensible to make use of all the twisted pairs in a Cat5/Cat6 line.

Hi there,

Yes these boards work just fine. Have been using them for quite some time and have sold a bunch through DrZzzzs website as well.