Defective apa102 led in 5m string

1

I’ve set up my first bunch of kit on the floor to test. Seems one of my strings has a single defective led.

It flickers and blinks on the more dense patterns. In the near solid ones its basically off, the more sparse ones it spends more time lit up… Has same behaviour in all colours.

I’ve tried connecting power at both ends of strip, reducing data rate, running at minimum brightness… No change.

Given its a single led out of 300, I might just live with it… Especially given it might be hard to return/refund since I cut the plugs off the cables (d’oh!)

I do wonder a) if I can try anything else and b) if I’m risking killing the whole strip if it dies completely?

Id upload a video I took on my phone but it won’t let me, too big I guess.

2

Depending on the coating of the strip and where you’re using it … you might consider cutting the LED out of the strip and soldering the two parts together. You could always put some tape on the back and/or around the connection to keep it strong.

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