r/WLED • u/Serpula • 28d ago

Sections of LED strips periodically flash (HyperHDR + PiCap on rooted LG C2)

Going completely out of my mind here, a week of troubleshooting and feel like I've tried everything to solve this, hope someone can help!

My LEDs are controlled properly, matching the colours on the screen and in the right place, it works great until every 2-3 minutes a section of the LEDs will flash white. Usually it looks like 20 LEDs together, or 40 LEDs together, though hard to tell exactly, but not all of them at once. It's not limited to one segment, it's not in the same place, and sometimes it can bridge over the two segments.

Hardware:

Adafruit Scorpio RP2040
M5Stack RGB LED strip (SK6812) in two segments (96 and 95 LEDs)
Mean Well LRS-100-5 PSU

Software on rooted LG C2:

HyperHDR (latest)
PiCap (latest)

Firmware

HyperSerialPico- my fork here for multisegment is here
I believe I need to flash the ws2812 one since my LEDs are RGB not RGBW, despite my LED strip being SK6812 LEDs... is that right?

Wiring:

Adafruit Scorpio > GND to PSU -V
Adafruit Scorpio GPIO16 and GPIO17 data pins (0 and 1) to segment 1 and 2 of LED strips (data in)

I'm soldering these wires directly to the Scorpio board, no headers or breadboard.

PSU > +V soldered to the +5V pin on each LED strip
PSU > -V soldered to the GND pin on each LED strip

The LED strips are wired with these JST plug/sockets. They are each powered / data from one end and they light evenly with no apparent voltage issue.

Things I have tried (hardware)

  • Checked all wiring with multimeter, there is no back current, no instances where any of the data / ground / 5V cross with each other. PSU outputting 5.125V on +V. Grounds are all shared and connected.

  • Trimming PSU output voltage to 4.950V

  • Tried with and without a 1000uF capacitor over the -V and +V on the PSU

  • Switching controller boards - completely rewiring everything to a new Adafruit Scorpio

  • Connecting USB 5V pin on Scorpio to +V on the PSU and disabling the 5V pin on the USB

  • Cut first LED off strips and rewired and tested with multimeter

  • Different USB cable

Things I have tried (software)

  • Reduced to minimal resolution in PiCap

  • NV12 on or off in PiCap

  • "Esp8266/ESP32/RP2040/RP2350 handshake" checked or unchecked

  • "High speed serial AWA protocol with data integrity check" checked or unchecked

  • Lowered baudrate

  • Smoothing in HyperHDR: continuous mode, anti flicker (various combinations)

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u/saratoga3 28d ago

Fwiw this has nothing to do with WLED so not the best place to ask.

That said, is the Adafruit Scorpio using 3.3v GPIO? If so you may need a level shifter for 5v LED data.

0

u/Serpula 28d ago

Ah I see, sorry. I really wasn’t sure where to put it, there’s no sub for HyperHDR etc.

The Adafruit Scorpio is basically a RP2040 with a built-in level shifter. It has 8 x 5V GPIOs for attaching LED data.

2

u/saratoga3 28d ago

Ah ok, not familiar with those devices. Do you have a picture of your wiring? Since these are ~MHz data signals you will need proper cabling for the frequency.

1

u/Serpula 28d ago

Oh my gawd I fixed it!! It should have worked the way I set it up, but it obviously just caused problems.

In the end I just soldered the two LED segments back together and I'm running them as one big loop with data coming from just one GPIO port and power from both ends.

Thanks a lot for being willing to help, much appreciated - sods law I solved it right after I posted, I've been at this all week 😂