I have some trouble with neopixel strips (bought via Play-Zone in Switzerland).
My Hardware:
- Aruduino
5V, 5A power supply (output voltage is at max 5.1 Volt)
60LED/m Neopixel strip http://www.adafruit.com/products/1461
144LED/m Neopixel strip http://www.adafruit.com/products/1507
I connected the strip as suggested in your tutorial (with a capacitor over the power supply and a resistor in the data line). → Thank you for the great tutorial :-)
I tested the strip with your demo script and it worked fine.
After a half hour, the first pixel on the strip started to behave strange and turned white. Al the other pixels started to flicker and change color randomly.
After some Google and forum research, I decided to cut away the first pixel and test the strip again.
Same strange behavior as before, even after 5 cut pixels.
To make sure that the script was not faulty, I also tested the fast SPI script to drive the strip and even with a different Arduino pin. The strip also showed very strange behavior. :-/
Because I’m under a lot of pressure (I have finish my project in a very short time, it goes to Burning Man), I decided to throw the broken strip away and do some test with my 144pixel/m strip. To prevent the whole strip from getting destroyed, I only used small pieces of 20 pixels length.
I also placed a diode in the power line between power supply and strip, to make sure the voltage never went higher than 5V and added a second capacitor (total 2000uF). I even tried a different power supply and monitored the voltage over a longer period of time. No spikes higher than 4.9V.
Long story short:
I fried al my NeoPixels, lost a day and a big part of my budget, without even the slightest hint what I did wrong. :-(
This is my third project involving Neopixels. But I never had trouble with NeoPixels. That made me think, it might be a problem with the strips.
Although I tested 2 strips of two different types, so the chance of a material problem seems to be minimal to me. But I used the same equipment (power supply etc.) as in earlier projects, and I never fried even 1 pixel before. :-/
Any suggestions what I did wrong?
Fast help is appreciated ;-)
Greetings from Switzerland :-)
Marc
PS:
The current project is a smaller Version of my last project: A Arduino powered, MIDI based DrumMachine in Steampunk look :-)
https://www.facebook.com/MidiDrumMachine