Hello,
I am extremely new to arduino and i barely know anything. I’ve managed to put together an arduino mega with about 13 metres of ws2812b and a 60amp power supply. It was all working well until today, when i saw the led strips where flickering like they werent supposed to.. i quickly turned the power off and read online, but i cannot seem to find anything other than something with adding capasitors and/or resistors. Is there something wrong with my board or do i need to add capasitors or resistors?
As mentioned above i’m a complete dummy in terms of arduino, so please “dumbproof” your answers
Thanks in advance,
William
Show us a good schematic of your circuit.
Show us a good image of your ‘actual’ wiring.
Give links to components.
Power the strip from both ends.
FYI
You might have to connect the power supply & Gnd to the strip in several places to prevent voltage drop along the strip.
Like both ends and the middle at a minimum. Maybe more.
IMO that's the main drawback of these strips: due to the parallel nature of the circuit, you end up with a low voltage and pretty extreme current levels if you run considerable lengths of these, while the power traces on the strips are relatively flimsy. Trying to force several amps through such a trace is just asking for trouble. Not to mention the EMI implications of such a setup, particularly as the leds are pwm-ed.
What's important is not so much the length, but the number of LEDs. Ws2812 strips come in 30, 60, even 144 LEDs per metre.
That should be adequate for 13 metres @ 60 LEDs per metre. You can assume 50~60mA per led, so 780 LEDs would be 40~47A. Of course, that's only when every led is full brightness white. Other colours, brightness and patterns can use far less.
Does it do this consistently, or was that a one-off, but you don't dare switch it on again?
As mentioned, describe your wiring: the AWG/cross-section area of the wires, how many places along the strip they are connected, how the data wire is physically wired, does it run alongside a ground wire back to the Arduino etc.
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