After lots of trial and error with buck converters and 3.3 / 5 volt data issues I have a functional circuit for the playa bikes! Thanks for all the help from folks on the fastLED list!! Hope to meet some of you at BM!
What did you end up going with?
I added a 74HCT245 transceiver and used a much higher wattage buck converter (http://www.aliexpress.com/snapshot/6180261220.html). That seemed to do the trick. I haven’t had any of the glitchy pattern freezing behavior so far. Fingers crossed.
Video still processing … it seems …
still processing… must be something wrong