Getting Started Issues

Hi there wizard and company,

I’m brand new to just about every aspect of this and I’m starting to feel like I’m way in over my head: I have a Pixelblaze V3 Standard that I am having trouble connecting to my computer via bluetooth. Day one out of the box set up and successfully discovered the device and accessed http://192.168.4.1 but this was before I had connected the LED strip.
After I connected the SK9822 LED Pixel Strip DATA and CLOCK DC5V I was and still am unable to discover the device.

Problem no2 (which I suspect might be related)

I suspect I am not powering my unit adequately because I resorted to using whatever USB cables I already had, assuming they would do the job. However I’m finding that I get very different results depending on what cable I use which just goes to show that I know absolutely nothing about electricity. Some cables don’t even power the entire LED strip and the last quarter simply don’t light. Other cables can power the whole strip but produce a pulse in lighting. Some effect the quality of the light.

TLDR What kind of power cable do I need to successfully power on the pixelblaze and the 144 LEDs connected to it.

I suspect if I get adequate power the connectivity issue will be sorted. If not I’ll post the issue separately.

My electrical knowledge beyond “multiplying the LED draw by the number of LEDs” is pretty much zero so if the problem is anything more complex than that, it’s probably outside my ability to help troubleshoot.

A dedicated 5v power supply will help with power issues. If each SK9822 LED draws 50ma when at full power (this would be white at max brightness so each one is rarely actually drawing this much). 50*144 = 7200, or 7.2 amps. Thats a lotta amps. I usually just stick a 5v 10a power supply on any PB, although this is almost always overkill, and they’re $20, and big, so sizing down if you can is usually good. You’d probably be fine at 5v 5a depending on what sort of patterns you want to run and how bright you want them to be.

Are your LEDs soldered directly to the PB or are they easy to disconnect? If you disconnect them, can you once again connect to the PB’s WiFi network? You can also hold down the reset button to reset it to WiFi setup mode to see if that helps.

If you can connect, you can try setting the max brightness to something like 10% or even lower in the settings, reconnecting the LEDs, and if the issues go away, then it is almost certainly a lack of power to the PB.

Hi @Leo!
Welcome! We’re here to help! No drowning allowed :wink:

Pixelblaze doesn’t support bluetooth, just wifi. Don’t want you to have to worry about trying random bluetooth things. If you got as far as discovery and accessing it, then you got way past this part anyway and were doing the right thing.

I agree with what @teaderechoweb suggests. Try removing the LEDs, see if you can get back in to the controller. If you configured it to connect to your wifi network, it should pop up in the discovery service again.

For powering LEDs at full brightness, take a look at this doc, in the “Powering Pixelblaze and LEDs” section.

https://electromage.com/hardware_getting_started

Thanks so much for helping me out guys! I’ve let this project sit on the backburner for so long you have no idea how much I appreciate the assistance.

So I disconnected the LED strip from the terminal and managed to connect to the Pixelblaze again so at least we have consistency. I powered it by connecting a USB mini to USB 3.0 hub on my PC. After established a connection I unplugged the power, reattached the LED strip and thankfully it is still discoverable at discover.electromage.com.

However I cannot proceed to the UI like I did previously at 192.168.1.72. Additional details: the orange indicator LED on the PCB is blinking in a repeating pattern of [blink…blink-blink-blink] and the first 10 LEDs on the strip are not lighting up. This is interesting because in previous attempts to power the strip the LEDs that were not lighting did so on the opposite end of the strip.

Troubleshooting can certainly be an intriguing endeavor huh? I’ll read over the Powering Pixelblaze and LEDs section again.

Update: I’ve unplugged and replugged in the unit with LED strip attached. It appears the Pixelblaze is randomly assigning a pattern to the strip at some unknown interval? I’ve seen three different patterns though the changes don’t seem to be motivated by booting on. Good to know those LEDs on the end aren’t defective.

As @teaderechoweb and @wizard have suggested, there is probably not enough power available from USB to power that entire LED strip. This will usually cause unpredictable brownout/reset conditions on the Pixelblaze. So you will need to add a separate 5v power supply that is capable of providing enough current for the whole strip at full brightness. Definitely read that Powering Pixelblaze info!

The random pattern you see on the LEDs after each powerup might not be coming from the Pixelblaze, but just the random initial state of each LED in the strip.

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I’ll 4th that advice. The odds are your USB power is the issue.

Check to see if you have a sequencer enabled too, if set to shuffle and a timer setting will cause it to switch patterns.