Troubleshooting

Before starting Troubleshooting

Please make sure that everything is connected and installed as described in this guide before going deep in this section, most of the problems that arise are usually related to faulty connections.

The LEDs do not turn on

  • Doublecheck your wirings and connections, make sure that the power supplies are working correctly.
  • Check the light status of the protopixel controller. When it is not connected to the Protopixel Create (blue led turned off) by pressing the button you could send different color patterns to your LED fixtures.

I get flashes when sending white content, but not with blue, green or red content.

Upgrade your power supply or dim your content. The power supply you are using may be protecting itself in case of demanding more power than its capacity. The power consumption depends on the color of the LEDs, and bright colors have a bigger consumption.

I get “Color Noise” in the LEDs.

Adressable LEDs use a SPI protocol where the signal is sent trough an only wire without redundancy or error control. This signal could be affected by an external interference source or by a power degradation. This is usually related to the method used to connect the controller, satellites and the LEDs. You can reduce the chance of getting noise by applying some of the following measures:

  • Decreasing the total distance of ethernet cable between the controller and the satellite. Remember that the maximum distance for this cable is 3.5m, if you use longer distances you are on your own, but if for whatever reason you insist, it is better to replace ethernet runs for cable suited to your LED connectors, with bigger section (>=0.5mm recommended). This will significally reduce the power drain caused by the distance and the thin section of the ethernet wires.
  • Using Cat. 6 UTP ethernet cable between the controller and the satellites. Cat6 UTP cables are slightly wider than cat5 and the 4 different signals are isolated by a plastic divider.
  • Always as possible, separate the data runs (ethernet and otherwise) from other cables, such as AC and DC power cables.
  • The use of a 330ohm resistor as close as possible to the led fixture will filter the received signal and drastically reduces the noise
  • Always use good power supplies! Low quality power supplies may introduce electrical noise to the whole installation.
  • When the environment is too noisy and all the previous solutions did not work, you could try to use a spi/ttl signal amplifier. These devices use an external source of power that isolates the signal from the controller and amplify it.

Note

When none of the above solutions works, it is time to split your installation by using another controller and placing it as close as possible to the data_in of your LED fixtures.

I can’t find a solution for my problem

If this section did not work for you, please contact to product-support@protopixel.net.