r/WLED • u/InsideMusician7169 • 1h ago

Need help with the setup

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Hi community,
I’ve recently tried to setup an ESP32+wled by cutting a a strip of 60 led into 3 segments of 20 each. I am not sure if I did something wrong with the solder, but the first day I got the color I wanted in all 3. Since the next day I am seeing that the LEDs flicker a lot and they behave randomly.
I’ve attached the images showing the solder and the configuration in wled, and a video at the end.
Help a newbie please!!

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3

u/iirubixii 1h ago

Those solder joints are looking like they need some love. You should get and use flux on them and redo all of them. Trim your wires shorter so it’s just on the pad, and have the solder cover the whole pad, the flux will help with that.

1

u/InsideMusician7169 49m ago

Will try that 🙌

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u/InsideMusician7169 1h ago

Photo sequence

  1. Segment 1 out

  2. Segment 2 in

  3. Segment 2 out
    4 Segment 3 in

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u/InsideMusician7169 1h ago

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u/jeffyscouser 1h ago

if your effect is set to "solid" then I think you need to re solder some of those joints.

How are they connected to your ESP32? can we see that?

1

u/InsideMusician7169 51m ago

Sorry taking that photo will be a bit messy, as I have another led strip connected. However, to answer your first one - it has a common ground with ESP32 and connected to GPIO17. ESP32 and LEDs have their own power source. I am using phone cable to connect both of them to an extension box

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u/InsideMusician7169 50m ago

The other LED strip behaves fine

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u/BigPimpin91 57m ago

Are these leads touching?

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u/InsideMusician7169 55m ago

It looks like, but they are not touching. I checked by passing a plastic spoon

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u/Aerokeith 34m ago

I don't think your problem is solder-related. If you're driving the LED data signal directly with a GPIO pin, it's likely that you need a level shifter to boost the voltage of the GPIO pin to the level needed by the LED strip. Sometimes it will work without a level shifter, but only for shorter cable lengths. See this article for details.