I recently got a LPD8806 LED strip. I've followed the tutorial down to every step. I hooked it up to a standard PC PSU using the 5v line. I used a common ground for the LED strip and arduino. I was able to run the sample scripts, but after a couple of minutes, 2 leds in the middle of the pack started flickering and were not in sync with the rest. The following segments we're properly lit, but we're not animated anymore. The chip on that segment got very hot, so I immediatly unplugged it. No magic smoke.
Something seems to have gone wrong with just that segment, causing the data not to follow through on the further segments. Should I just remove that segment from the strip and consider it DOA? Is there something else I should be looking at that could be causing this defect?

