Anyone see partial failure of LDP8806 LED strips?

[gduprey]

Howdy,

I've purchased 6 5m reels of the #306 LDP8806 based digital RGB LEDs. The first 4 reels have worked great for a few months and are in continuous use,24x7. I've noticed no problems with them at all.

The last two reels, purchased in mid-March, worked great for a few days, then partially failed. Both were driven by the same 5volt power supply and controller (and custom PIC based controller) that was used to to "burn in" testing for the other 4 reels. After about 3 days of testing, the first reel stopped working at around the 10th LED and on the second reel, after about 6 days of testing, the reel stopped working somewhere around the middle of the LEDs.

All LEDs before the failed one continue to work fine. The LEDs were never unrolled from the reel, so were not subjected to any mechanical, electrical or EMF/EMI stress. The power supply is highly regulated (it's one from the Adafruit store -- the 5V, 10A unit).

I'm working with Adafruit to get these replaced. However, as I tend to use them for installations that are pretty-permanent (and difficult to service once in use), I'm trying to see if anyone else has had problems with strips failing lately. Such a case might suggest a "bad batch". My hope is it's just a bad batch. The alternative would be having to test each reel for weeks and expect up to a 33% failure rate over time.

So if anyone has run into any of these strips that later failed somewhere in the strip, I (and adafruit) would appreciate a brief addition/posting/comment about the wheres, hows and, ideally when you purchased the strip from adafruit.

Thanks,

Gerry

[adafruit]

Thanks for the note, we haven't seen any particular 'bad batches' - the vast majority work just fine. Thanks for letting us know, however. We do go through a lot so we will try to keep track of any issues.

[buton]

i have this strips for almost over a month and half working 24/7...no problems at all..

[bmax]

Similar situation. Purchased in March, longstrandtest/arduino was fine. More recently, stops at LED #22. A couple of LEDs downstream (#31,32) always on dim red. I've kept all but the first meter on the reel since purchase. Gentle woggling at #22 doesn't restore the rest of the strand.

I'm about to cut it up to see if this is simply a bad cell, but wondered if anyone has other advice. When it fails like this, is it usually the junction between the flex circuit boards? Or the LDP8806 itself?

Has anyone tried sliding the PCBs out of the cool waterproof tube? Can I hope to get a meter of led boards back into it again if I do that?

Thanks much,
Brian

[adafruit_support_bill]

One cause of this is solder joint failure between the flex-circuit board and the chip. These are often repairable. Removing the strip from the sheath is not too difficult. I think it would be difficult to get it back in without causing further damage. If you don't need full-waterproof protection, you could slit the sheath lengthwise to re-insert the strip.