Just picked up a interesting BTF strip that is a WS2811 addressable CCT strip, running at 24V. It’s an interesting COB arrangement, giving a very “smooth” light (vs typical “bright LED dots”) by piling a ton of little LEDs next to each other.
The COB strip has a mix of 3000K and 6000K white LEDs and given it’s driven at 24V, the LEDs are controlled/clustered in groups of 48 (from what I can find).
I’m curious if anyone has used something like this with WLED? The fact that the underlying driver is WS2811 should make it simple, but wondering if WLED has “support” for what looks like a 2 channel (vs normal 3 channel RGB) LED strip that is just different temps of white (I see CCT stupport, but am thinking that is for driving more linear CCT lighting, vs addressable lights).
Guessing this is mostly UI stuff (i.e. presenting the CCT as an appropriate set of sliders for WS2811 adressables)?
I haven’t fired it up yet, but I’m guessing the controllers look like 3 channel WS2811 normal stuff with just two channels hooked up, so underlying WLED driver will work, just with stuff like “use red for 3K and blue for 6K” or something.
Just hooked them up and as expected, they are bog-simple - red channel (for standard WS281X GRB ordering) is warm/3K and green channel is White/6K and blue channel is ignored.
Each “addressable” LED/zone is 8cm long, for a total of 12 addressable zones per meter or 60 addressable zones on a 5m spool. Each of the addressable zones has 24x3K and 24x6K LEDs or 48 LEDs/zone (the 3K and 6K LEDs are discrete and on distinct, adjacent packages, vs that typical 5050 RGB LED package). Another way of looking at each zone is that the effective LED “dot pitch” is about 3.3mm/LED (counting the combo on 1 3K and 1 6K LED as a single “LED”). Which makes for a much more “even” light without a diffuser compared to 60 LED/m and even 120 LED/m strips (though the later is semi-close looking, just not as diffused).
I expect their RGB version of this to be similar in terms of LED pitch and size of each addressable zone.
I can see this for architectural lighting, maybe even tunable counter top lighting, though the 8cm/zone break down is pretty large for anything of smaller scale. I would expect typically, all “zones” would be driven the same, but it’s an interesting mix and definitely nicer to control than a typical linear/PWM CCT strip (less wires, for one).
Do you or anyone here make the stip work? I have received this strip from aliexpress and tried to set up with this wled controller. Updated the fw on the controller to 0.14.0-b1 and find this led preference almost good. Whites are working fine but can not address the segments.
Strips work fine. The b2 updates are, I expect, mostly about how the UI presents the CCT data and allowing the white to be more naturally controlled. But even without that, you can use them and just mix the Red channel (warm LED) and green channel (Cool LED). I don’t use that controller, but it says it’s compatible with WLED, so it should work.
Just read back a few posts - I included all the details and am using the same strip you linked to. It’s really easy. Just plug it in like any WS281x strip and know that only the red/green sliders work and what they do. It really is that simple
Thats odd - it really looks just like a bog-standard WS281X strip to WLED. You can segment it as much as you want (just tested and it seems to work fine - exactly as it would for any other strip).
You do have to work with the fact that each “LED” is like 8cm long, so that is the “minimum size” of a LED (and thus, segment). That is a physical thing, given the strip uses a COB arrangement and feed 24V to do it.
Hey so I’ve got one of these as well and am having a bit of trouble.
I have a 24V power supply powering ~1.5M of these CCT COB LEDs (~576 LEDs/m) and a separate phone carger 5V power supply powering the ESP32. They’re both plugged into the wall so should share a ground, right?
Anyway, the LEDs are lighting up, but the individual warm white / cold white sections seem to be randomly flashing on / off. I’m not sure if this is a configuration issue or an issue of not sharing ground further upstream.
Here’s my config, with 0.14.0-b3 (build 2306180 - nightly from 19.06.)
A common “ground” via the wall won’t work. They need to share a common ground on the DC/Low-Volt side. Two supplies are fine, but they HAVE to share a common/negative voltage line.
Easy to fix.
Connect the negative (usually black) side of the 24V supply to the negative WLED supply (use a voltmeter to check polarity if you are not sure which side is ground/negative on each power supply.
Until that is done, don’t bother with any other tests or diagnostics
Thanks for the quick reply. I’ve tied the grounds and negative together and that seems to ahve worked. I can now control the warm white / cold white via the two colored channel sliders. However, the entire strip still blinks when on (in any configuration / brightness).
I have WLED set to “solid”
EDIT: I had to disable the automatic brightness limiter
Yep - you can either disable it or set the actual power supply limit in the config to match your PS. I usually disable it myself as I know I’ve sized things properly, but if you undersize a power supply and want to protect things, it’s useful.
Thanks for the quick help! Any other tips on best to configure this to appear correctly as a CCT light to homeassisstant, for example?
@blazoncek mentioned there should be better support in b2+, I’m on b3 (today’s nightly) and there doesnt seem to be any additional support.
There does appear to be a new “WS2811 White” option in the LED preferences now, but that simply exposes a brightness slider. No color temperatures unfortunately.
