I have 450 ws2815 pixels with power on the start and middle of the run. all was well with the install till about 2-3 months then it began to flicker. The flicker got progressively worse. I changed power supplies and am going to add two more power points on the strips today. It seems if I select a static pattern then disconnect the data line the flickering goes away.
things I’ve noticed…
when i disconnect half the strip the flickering is not as bad
when i increase brightness the flickering is worse (i used to be able to go very low with no flicker, not any more)
a few of the pixels flicker now even with brightness at 0%
any help would be appreciated! =)
Pixelblaze v.3 with 40amp PSU, BI&DI connected to data
So more info. These are 12v strips so I was using a 1a USB adapter to power the pixelblaze. I just swapped it to a 4amp and the flickering is gone except for the small section of strip that was flickering with the brightness at 0.
I also just noticed that the first Pixel before where the flickering is occurring is dead. I’m wondering if I cut that out It may resolve the issue.
I couldn’t re-find it now, but I recently came across a post on the LAA Facebook group where a lot of people were encountering glitching pixels frequently in WS2815 projects. This matches my n=1 experience as well - I have one strip on my desk and particular pixels get very flashy in certain situations. I know this doesn’t help much; I think you should certainly consider a bridge wire to manually skip signal over the misbehaving pixel (which is annoying: isn’t this what BI is supposed to be there for?)
I had some problems like this that turned out to be the LED strip shorting out against the aluminum rail that it was stuck too. Also had this type of issues with bad solder joints that I think we’re shorting out. So I would look at connections and make sure you don’t have any shorts through the bottom of the strip especially where you might have soldered.