Random LED flashing

[dpackham]

With some of the modes, I get random LEDs flashing. I don't have glitter or lightning enabled. where can I look for more info on this issue? DrZs code that I came from does not so its a difference with yours and his.

[thehookup]

This is almost always a power (voltage drop) issue, try lowering the brightness and see if the flashing goes away.

[ad8mustanggt]

This sounds like the same issue I'm having/mentioned in #4. I'll have to check the voltage to make sure i'm not hitting an issue there but otherwise I haven't been able to narrow it down. I was also able to run the DrZzs/Bruh code perfectly fine. @dpackham - Below is my test set-up, do we have anything in common that we could try and narrow this down?

Single string of WS2811 LEDs. 50 LEDs total.
5v 2A power-supply feeding both the NodeMCU and LEDs directly
logic voltage converter to go from 3v on the node to 5v for the data pin on the LEDs
NodeMCU from AliExpress

[dpackham]

maybe we need to use

FastLED.delay(1000 / FRAMES_PER_SECOND);
VS
chaseDelay = (intPayload*5);

FastLED/FastLED#306

Maybe?

[thehookup]

That's not a real delay. It's just a timer interval. The code is 100% non-blocking.

[dpackham]

Ahh. I have a test setup with a NodeMCU I found I
had :) and 1 string of lights connected to my desk power supply. I still get flickering around the 20+ second mark

Hmmm

https://photos.app.goo.gl/a5HovavvfvVytTce9

[dpackham]

It might make a difference that I am powering my flickering D1 mini from the LEDs power wires and ground. NOT the USB port. apparently, there is a diode that gets bypassed when you do that. Also, I read that bumping the CPU speed to 160mhz might help. ill give that a try and report back

[thehookup]

huh, that's strange. Looks like a timing error. I have some 2811s sitting around, let me see if I can replicate it.

[ad8mustanggt]

Here's a video of mine, very similar: https://photos.app.goo.gl/WDeEz2X6EknDEhwA8

FWIW - I moved the FastLED.h include line from the top of the library section to the bottom and it significantly reduced how many random flickers I got. I'm not sure what this means or how it might point to a fix but wanted to pass along the info...

One more edit - Moving the FastLED include to the bottom really helped clean-up the color_chase effect but it made the rainbow effect look really bad, especially noticeable at low brightness. Moving FastLED back to the top makes rainbow look good again.

[batchnulls]

I'm having the same issue but I'm using WS2812B. Using a NodeMCU, 5m 150 LED strand, 300w power supply to test. A simple LED Locator has random flashes and stutters as it moves down the strand. I tried adding FASTLED_ALLOW_INTERRUPTS 0 and changing retry to 1. The same setup runs the FastLED demo smoothly without issue.

[batchnulls]

Definitely seems to have something to do with the timer. I replaced those with FastLED.delay and animations run smoothly without flickering or stuttering.

[batchnulls]

Hmm, think I'm on to something. I enabled the other zones (even though I'm not using them), and things are working better. Maybe a timing issue with only a single zone and small number of LEDs enabled. Will dig into it more.

[thehookup]

Definitely seems to have something to do with the timer. I replaced those with FastLED.delay and animations run smoothly without flickering or stuttering.

Can you give me more information about what timers you replaced? Replacing the simpleTimer stuff with fastLED.delay will not provide the same function.

[batchnulls]

It wasn't a simple drop in and it didn't work perfectly but the flicker went away. Haven't had any more time to mess with it. See my other reply, simply enabling a second zone also fixed the issue. So it must be something with timer and small number of LEDs to process

[thehookup]

Gotcha.

If that's the case you can probably just add a very small FastLED.delay to the void loop to simulate a lower frames per second.

[dpackham]

enabling the second zone even though I don't have that zone hooked to anything fixes the flashing for me. very smooth now on the animations i noticed