Led strip not responding to commands from Uno R3 board.

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,

I am a first time user of an Arduino board and i am using the "Elegoo Uno R3" in which i am trying to control 16.4ft of Alitove WS2812B LED lights.

Following the "Learn to Program Custom LED Lights — Project Tempos" tutorial i have coppied it 1 for 1 however my LED's do not respond.

I have now got a "5V 2A barrel power supply" but i was using my monitor power supply before which was giving me a couple red flashing lights on the strip but wasn't responding to any other commands and i'm not even sure if i was using the "blink" example code at that point either.

Now when i have it plugged in and i verify and upload the blink command to the board with the LED's connected non of them blink or flash.

Also the LED strip is warm to the touch closest to where the power is coming from.

Any help is appreciated, will attach images too.

2

Don't post photos of code; post code between
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The standard blink does not work with WS2812B leds. Download e.g. the FastLed library and go through the examples.

What are the specs of that "monitor power supply" ? If it's more than 5V, you will have damaged your strip.

How many leds in the strip? 2A on 5 meter strip is probably not enough.

3

Hello thank you for your help,
The monitor power supply had an output of 12Vdc == 3.0A.
Now using the FastLED blink example and uploading it to the board also does nothing to the LED strip.
The LED strip has 150 pixels.

4

If that 12V went directly to the 5V and GND of the strip, you have damaged the strip.

5

Will purchase a replacement strip and try again, thank you

6

@sergeidrew

Your topic was Moved to it's current location / section as it is more suitable.

Could you also take a few moments to Learn How To Use The Forum.

Other general help and troubleshooting advice can be found here.
It will help you get the best out of the forum in the future.

7

The tutorial that you linked is incomplete. It is recommended that there be a 1000uF cap across the 5V supply to the strips and a 470 (or so) Ohm resistor in series between the Arduino output and the first Din of the strip. See here. The cap smooths the current to the strip and the resistor limits current into Din and protects the Arduino output.

8

OK, clearly you must power a 5 V strip with 5 V and not 12 (or anything else). You must connect it directly to the strip with the capacitor described across the supply at the strip. If you have not actually connected 12 V to a 5 V strip, it should still be operable.

sergeidrew:
Also the LED strip is warm to the touch closest to where the power is coming from.

That is a very bad sign!

You do not power the Arduino from 12 V. It requires 5 V and since you are running the strips at 5 V, you can take the power from the start of the strip to the Arduino "5V" pin and ground. You need to bundle all three wires between Arduino and strip together - 5 V, ground and the data wire. No open loops in the wiring.

If you are (unwisely) using a UNO, you need to disconnect that "5V" pin from your main power supply when you plug it in to the PC for programming (or any other reason!).

So by "16.4ft" you actually mean a 5 metre strip. If it is - most likely - 60 LEDs per metre, that is 300 LEDs at 55 mA each full brightness (and about 300 mA together even when dark). That is 16 Amps - you need a 5 V 20 A switchmode power supply.

The foil in the strip cannot handle that current. You need to run a cable pair of something like 1 mm2 alongside the strip to feed current into the strip at least every metre, including both ends.

So perhaps when you have all the necessary parts together, we can get somewhere. :sunglasses:

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