Led strip all white = not enough battery power?

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

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dlinsalata
 
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Led strip all white = not enough battery power?

Post by dlinsalata »

Hey all -

I built the gemma-powered scarf (https://learn.adafruit.com/animated-neo ... -fur-scarf) - great guide, thank you! I built it a couple weeks ago and was really enjoying it.

I went to re-program it yesterday, and after uploading the whole strip just stayed white + the red reset-indicator light was a dull solid red. Based on my research on the forums, it appears that the most likely cause is that the battery was too low (I was powering it off a USB 2 hub connected to my macbook).

Does that sound like the right diagnosis? I'm going to charge the battery off a wall outlet tonight and try again, and I wanted to see if there was anything else I should research beforehand (like, could I have somehow messed up the bootloader?...although all I did was upload a slightly tweaked version of the provided code.)

Thanks!

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splatten
 
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Re: Led strip all white = not enough battery power?

Post by splatten »

How may LED's do you have in the strip?

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dlinsalata
 
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Re: Led strip all white = not enough battery power?

Post by dlinsalata »

~77 (half of what the project calls for). It was working fine for a while and seems like it stopped on my latest code upload.

I charged the battery fully last night and tried to run it off that - now it doesn't even get to white LEDs - just turns on with the reset light on dimly. It seems almost like when I was running it off USB3...except I can't think of anything that changed from when I had this working minus re-uploading the code.

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splatten
 
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Re: Led strip all white = not enough battery power?

Post by splatten »

You can calculate the amount of current required based on the number of LED's and the RGB values you are trying to send to the LED's. I have blown small power supplies before that did not have current limiting on them. You are driving it from batteries, whats the maximum current you can draw? Is it sufficient?

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