Hello all! The situation is this.. I have 3 banks of cabinets I’m trying to put addressable leds(ws2814s) on top of. I have the powersupply in the basement directly below the kitchen that I have 12v power feeding to above each set of cabinets individually. I also have an 18 gauge 3 wire carrying the data from the first cabinet to the second and then to the third. The leds on each cabinet are separated by the wires running down into the basement and then back up to the next cabinet. The controller (esp32 sp803e) is on top of the first cabinet powered and connected right before the first strip of leds. When I initially powered them on and set the controller I had full functionality of the leds on the first cabinet and no response from the leds on the other two cabinets. I tested all the strips before installation and at that point took them down and tested them again. They all worked. The data was suspect.. so I got a quinled to install hoping to boost the signal.. it doesn’t appear to make a difference.. this project was done with two 16.4’ 60/m strips cut to fit on the cabinets in aluminum channel. I know the wire going down and coming up to each cabinet to carry the data signal is about 15 or so feet between each set of leds. So I’m gonna guess total length 20ft of leds and 40ft of wire in series. 60ft. What am I missing to get this to work? Thanks!
are you driving each strip from the controller? you can not series connect a data line for more than about 3ft. also loose wiring is very bad for the data signal, keep ground loops tight.
I was attempting to drive the strips in series with one another from the controller mentioned (only one) in order to have the effects such as chase go around the room won’t using multiple controllers in parallel cause the effects to function simultaneously at best? During initial testing with just the power supply controller and the leds (32’ 60/m) the effects and normal operations seems to work perfectly.. thanks for the help!
physical layout and virtual layout can be different. you can use one controller to control multiple strips (dig quad for example) OR you can run multiple controllers with one "master” that calculates all effects and streams the data to the others (DDP) but that can be glitchy if using wifi.
Is this 3 individual wires or 1 cable made of 3 wires joined together? Since the outputs of the addressable pixels are very, very weak the exact shape of the wires matters a lot in how far the signal can go. Changing the wiring may help, or alternatively you can install an active device to drive the wires with a stronger signal (or perhaps both depending on distance and what you have now).
If I can’t find a way to drive the leds with the single controller I’m leaning toward getting another one or two for on the other cabinets but then the question is how does one set them up to “follow “ each other for effects like chase. Also wanted to use the audio reactive feature how will that work with multiple controllers?
Currently i ran a 16/2 cable for power (16/2 is not daisy chained) to the leds and the 18/3 cable for power to the controller and daisy chain the single data wire from cabinet top to cabinet top. So as it stands now the 18/3 really only has two wires being used one for the data and one for ground. I used the 18/3 for powering the controller separately from the leds so that I can eventually add a wall switch to kill power to the leds and leave the controller on so it doesn’t need to be programed everytime I want to turn the leds off and on.
The unconnected wire will do bad things to a signal, so before you do anything else try connecting the third wire to data, power or ground at both ends and see if that is enough to get it working.
I will try that and let you know thanks! I should also mention when I cut and soldered the led strips to their needed sizes I used the quick connect ends you van get on amazon (btf lighting). I believe the wires used to make them is 22 gauge.. not entirely sure if that is contributing to this data issue but maybe..
I have connected all of the wires in the 18/3 cable 1 wire 12v, 1 wire ground, and one wire data.. no change.. still only have the first set of leds on the first cabinet responding..
Are you sure you have the second strip running in the right direction? Data only flows 1 direction. Should be little indicators of direction on the strip.
All of the strips are running in the same direction in series with each other.
So I’m pretty certain my problem is the distance the wire carrying the data signal from strip to strip is just too long.. so what i decided to do after checking out your idea about virtual layout is to just grab two more controllers so that I have one on each set of cabinets driving a data signal to each strip. Then I will just set them up in series virtually. I have to wait till they arrive but after more research about this im pretty confident this will resolve the issue..