[Solved] SK6812 (RGB+NW) - RGB colors not working with wled

I wanted to use wled for controlling SK6812 RGB+NW (natural white) leds. I bought from here - aliexpress link. For testing out the setup, I flushed a nodemcu (esp8266, 4MB) with wled (WLED_0.10.0_ESP8266.bin) and connected the D4, Ground and Vin of the nodemcu to the data, ground, and Vin of the LEDs. wled booted correctly and I can turn it on and off select colors etc. But when I select Red, Green, or Blue in the wled interface, instead of changing colors some of the leds turn off. FYI, I am only using 12 leds for testing - so that the drawn current can be supplied by the nodemcu without any issues. I made sure to setup wled to use 4 channels (RGBW) as well.

Interesting observation:

  1. If I select RGB in led settings, when I select Red - every fourth led will turn off. For Green its every 3rd and for Blue it will turn off every 2nd led. All other LEDs emit white color.
    If I select GRB in led setting when I select Green - every fourth, Red - every third and Blue - every 2nd led will turn off.
    Basically wled is treating every 4 led as an array and turning off one led based on what color sequence (RGB/GRB./…) and color (R/G/B) combination I choose in wled.
    Examples below -

  2. The white color turns on all LEDs and black turns off all LEDs.

Things I tried so far:

  1. Flashed another nodemcu to make sure it’s not faulty. The same issue persists.

Hi, can I get a closeup picture of the LED chip?
It seems to me like the seller sent you white-only LEDs that only have a single white channel and no RGB :frowning: Because WLED assumes 4 channels per LED and these only have one, you would get these patterns of LEDs that are on and off depending on the color.

You are probably right. That’s what I was thinking after observing that 4 LEDs were behaving like an RGBW unit. Here is a close up image of the LEDs

Yep, these are white only. Since the wrong product was sent, you might have a chance by contacting the seller…