I have a string of 3 wire 12VDC ws2812B LED beads with an apparently broken data line.
I cut the Ray Wu waterproof connector off the feed end, and tinned the wire ends to ease testing the conductors with a meter. The VCC and Ground leads are patent, however there is no signal passing through the data line. Has anyone found a way to test the wire for breaks in these little devils?
Cut off the last working LED. Maybe is the data output buggy
Thanks. But they’re all not working! They were cute when they did work.
You can’t check for continuity on the data line. It connects to the chip in the pixels and does not have a straight path through. If it’s not working at all I would cut off the first pixel and test the rest of them.
Also are you sure they are 12v and not 5v? If you connect 12v to 5v pixels you likely killed several/all of them.
Hi, Thanks for your input. Yes they are 12V. They worked the last time I used them. The problem is that the conductors are fragile and the wires break easily. I understand that I cannot measure continuity through the data pin.
I did arrive at a method of testing the string. I energized the VCC and GND line with 12VDC. Then I carefully pierced the center data conductor with a fine needle that I attached to a ESP32 running WLED. Working forward, until the lights came on, I found a broken wire 5 beads into the string, and will amputate the previous LEDS and resolder.
Thanks
Just to know: If you look carefull you see tiny points on one outer wire. Thats positive. Ground is on the other side. Signal in the middle.
Are you sure, that 3,3V logic level from ESP32 are enough? I would try it with 5V level to first data input. 5V level du you have after a levelshifter 3,3 to 5V or with a ATMEGA based Arduino 
Thank you. for your input. It works pretty well for the purpose of testing. The leads from the ESP32, both ground and d0 are very short. I made sure to tie both grounds together. That’s half the battle when using these devices.
Thanks.
3.3v of an normal esp32-c works fine for me.
