Led bike V1 is powered up. I’ve encountered some voltage issues so troubleshooting continues…
That looks great with the lines of that bike. Which is also the same bike I have for the playa. Fortunately mine is not covered in LED tape powered by FastSPI, so we won’t get them confused.
There is going to be so much LED out there on the Playa this year.
sweeeeeet ride
Ugh… I’m running into a problem now that I’ve transitioned off the bench and into the custom controller and battery. I’m concerned I may not have thought this through correctly. 
So I was hoping to power the 300 LEDs and teensy 3.1 board off a single 5v battery source but things are not working. Do people typically power the LEDs from a +5v source and have different dedicated coin cell or other battery for their controllers? I thought I could get away with having +5v to Vin on a teensy 3.1 and simultaneously use that to power the LEDs.
I’ve done 150 LEDs this way before with no issues. But I also add power to the opposite end as well.
You can do that but 300 is a lot of juice. What is your power source? Is the teensy close to the battery or connected to the LEDs far away from the battery via the strips?
At the moment, for testing purposes, I’m using a 9Ah 12v and a DC-DC voltage converter to 5v. I’ve connected the +5 to the teensy 3.1 Vin and also have the power for the LED strip connected there as well. Ground and data in going to one of the data pins on the teensy. At my desk I was using a wall supplied +5 for the LEDs and USB power for the teensy 3.1 and I just had common ground and the data line connected.
A 9Ah 12V SLA? That ought to be able to provide enough current. What’s your DC-DC converter rated for, how many watts?
@Robert_Atkins a 15w buck converter
You might consider a usb power bank - they are pretty cheap on amazon and/or ebay, and put out 5V @ 1A. Use one to power the teensy and some of the LEDs, and another to inject power into another area of the LEDs
There’s your problem. 300 LEDs x 0.06A each = 18A. Even if you’re running relatively unsaturated rainbow patterns, you’re looking at a third of that, which is still double what your buck converter can output.
Try FastLED.setBrightness(16) in setup() and see if that gets you anywhere.
Thanks for the suggestions! At this point I’m all the way back to the breadboard and laptop… The saga continues :). Ill post more when Ive made more discoveries.
It might be a combination of low power and the timing issues @Daniel_Garcia mentions in the other thread—your DC-DC converter’s output voltage is sagging under load, causing the timing to go funny.
I’ll know more tomorrow. I was going to try the adafruit strand test on the SLA / buck converter frankenbox I’ve got going. I see similar stuff about the 3.3v to 5v logic causing issues on pjrc and adafruit forums. I’ll order a 74HCT245 and try to find a buck converter that can handle 18A!?Yowza!!
Btw you guys have been super helpful. I appreciate all the good suggestions and pointers.
Try something like this guy:
I’ve got a couple, and they seem to be working well for me so far.
(If you want to buy one locally because shipping time, I’ve seen them advertised in relation to being used in RVs.)
Thanks @Robert_Atkins . I ordered a bunch of those just in case. I’ll try one out next week. I’m still futzing around trying to understand the issue. Doing the 3.3v => 5v logic conversion using the HTC didn’t fix the issue. I think it must have something to do with amperage on longer strands. I don’t understand why but adding a delay(2000) in the setup() at the beginning of one of my simple hue sketches fixed that sketch up to 255 pixels. Adding delay() calls in various places to slow things down also has some positive effects on a couple of test sketches.