LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

EL Wire/Tape/Panels, LEDs, pixels and strips, LCDs and TFTs, etc products from Adafruit

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digitalmethod
 
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Re: LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

Post by digitalmethod »

driverblock wrote:Not sure what could be causing the heat, but the other symptoms sound like the 5V is sagging.

How long is the strip? Any idea how much current the PS will provide? The strip wants about 2A per meter.

What's at the other end of the strip? Is it just open?
The strip is two meters. I have it hooked up to an Antec 430W ATX power supply that can handle a max output of 36A for 5V. I also tried switching my molex connector to the port on the back of the power supply that is a 6A circuit and still no joy. With everything powered up the multimeter shows the voltage floating at a pretty steady 5V.

Nothing is currently at the end of the strip, it just has the connector that came attached from the factory. I have tried supplying power to the other end of the strip, but it makes no difference.

One thing that I noticed is that when trying to hook power up the two ways indicated in the tutorial, USB powered Arduino and external power to the strip (common ground on the Arduino) versus same power with external power source supplying voltage to the 5V pin on the Arduino, the LEDs behave differently. With the same power source I get the behaviour described in the post, but with the Arduino on USB power there is no chasing colour effect, only random flickering.

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pburgess
 
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Re: LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

Post by pburgess »

DigitalMethod wrote:but with the Arduino on USB power there is no chasing colour effect, only random flickering.
Do you have a connection between the LED strip ground and Arduino GND?

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digitalmethod
 
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Re: LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

Post by digitalmethod »

pburgess wrote:Do you have a connection between the LED strip ground and Arduino GND?
Yep. Ground from the strip goes to one of the GND pins on the Arduino and the other GND pin goes back to ground on the power source.

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digitalmethod
 
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Re: LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

Post by digitalmethod »

To rule out the power supply, I swapped it out for another one, but still the same issue. Any other suggestions?

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: LPD8806 chips getting hot enough to burn skin

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

I'm out of ideas. Contact [email protected] for a replacement. Please refer to this thread.

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