Hello Wizard,
i have two (standard V3 and a Pico) boards with no output. Everything works, connects and all but no serial data. I suspect the voltage leveler ic, or the µP output. (i experiment a lot, i also work on different supply voltages, it can go wrong sometimes…)
Is there a way to swap to another µP output (by software)?
It is such a pity to dump these boards…
Hey @jdhollan - sorry to hear this happened to you.
When you say you work with a lot of various voltages, are you perhaps driving PB directly for an extended period of time off >5V? The regulator is “tolerant” of up to 18V for shorter exposures but we’ve seen some failures for extended use with higher voltages.
Do you happen to have a scope so you can see if it’s the level shifter or the SPI output itself?
I’m in the same boat: I accidentally plugged in an 18v then 12v before 5v. Now everything works in the UI but only 2 of 240 pixels light up. One works correctly the other is fixed blue.
Will have to disassemble this sculpture to swap out the PB to debug.
If any pixels are lighting up and responding properly, I don’t think there’s a problem with the Pixelblaze’s outputs. You might have damaged LEDs.
Sometimes they are salvageable by cutting and splicing out bad pixels. Sometimes it’s the previous pixel that is not sending data. It can be tedious, I usually cut out both the last working and first non-working LED to be sure.