Strip lights working - couple of oddities

BundyRoy

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Apr 9, 2014
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Rewired my ink1003 strip lights this weekend. I think I was underpowering them before when I had issues. Whatever it was, they are a lot brighter now anyway. Leaving scars on my retina. I now run two 3m strip (90 pixels each) joined with power in the front and power in the end.

Anyway it all seems happy and I'm happy. In one of my sequences I have an image of a tick (as in what you get if it's correct). I worked out which lights needed to be on in each strip and programmed it myself. Probably only 20 pixels on in any one strip at a time. I noticed on two of the strips about 5-6 pixels under the image there is a pixel comes on with a dull funny sort of colour. I checked my sequence and nothing there. I know I have my channels right as all the other images work.

Any ideas what could be causing it and any remedies.

I'll give you my theory. My guess is its near the buck convertor think in the ink strip and somehow there is some sort induced current turning on the light from the current in the buck convertor. The light is dull and sort of red and blue at the same time if that makes sense.

I haven't tried moving the tick up or down in the matrix yet to see if makes a difference.

Not to stressed about it unless it is likely to give me blown pixels down the track.
 

BundyRoy

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Not sure if this is related to whatever the problem is with the mystery pixels lighting up. When I had my issues with pixels dieing I had a strip laying on the ground between two other strips that were working. The strip was unplugged at both ends but when the other strips were in operation some of the lights on the unplugged strip would come on. Can't remember now how many but it wasn't just one or two it was 10 or so. Have I just uncovered a new sourse of energy, a new source of insanity or is there an explanation for this.
 

AAH

I love blinky lights :)
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It may well be an induced voltage causing the lights to light up. My 1st guess prior to reading the second post was that you may have the clock rate for the pixels set wrong. Now I'm leaning slightly in favour of the induced voltage theory.
 

BundyRoy

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Allan, what do you mean by clock rate. The ink1003 strip runs on ws2811 protocol and it only has 3 wires, no clock wire.

Maybe the error is I'm using ws2811 protocol to drive ink1003 pixels. My controller (Pixlite 16) only has ws2811 protocol. Odd that it only shows up on one image though.
 
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