RGB only wants TEAL!?

[Hot_Swap_Fries]

So. Bought some rgb 5050 strips, 15m of them. 10cm wide. I hook them up and they work perfectly!... for the first couple o' days. They begin to blink, but not the one from the receiver. I have them set in a rectangle shape, with the 4 pin connectors between them, as shown by my amazing art skillz. The first strip works fine, but the connector from 1 to 2 decided it only wanted to send teal to the rest of them. "I'll just swap connectors," I said, "no big deal." That didn't work. Tried re-setting the connection, it refused to work for any other color but teal. Has anybody got any hints here? I am legit at a loss here, I've tried everything I can.

 

*UPDATE* Turns out, when I switch it to red, 2, 3 & 4 decided to not operate at all. Green is good though.

Edited May 2, 2017 by Hot_Swap_Fries

[vanished]

By teal I assume you mean cyan, which is the "opposite" of red so it's not so surprising that setting it to red made them not work at all if they wanted to all be "teal".  You said green is good though... does blue also work?  I suspect it will

[Wyzzy Moon]

if they are the cheap chinese ones, than thats kinda what you get. I've got them too and there amazing but you don't want to chain more than one, than they stop working. Not enough power.

[matt0725]

From my understanding, RGB strips work as the 4th wire being positive, and the actual R,G, and B LED's are negative. (the polarity may be backwards, i can't remember) What it seems like is that somewhere a connection is loose on the red series of LED's. If you can, try rearranging the strips and see if the issue goes away, it could be the strip itself and not your wiring.

 

It could also be that your controller can't supply enough power, as others have already said. also try each strip individually if you can. If they all work, or now none of them want to work correctly, it may be the controller is now damaged due to the high current draw you had on it. 15m of LED's is quite a lot. They do make boosters for them that take load off of the controller.

 

Props to the mad art skills

[ArduinoBen]

19 minutes ago, Hot_Swap_Fries said:

*UPDATE* Turns out, when I switch it to red, 2, 3 & 4 decided to not operate at all. Green is good though.

If you have gotten the answer and are done with the question select the post that helped you as the answer so that people can easily tell that your question has ben answered and the forum will know that it has been answered as well.

[Hot_Swap_Fries]

56 minutes ago, Ryan_Vickers said:

By teal I assume you mean cyan, which is the "opposite" of red so it's not so surprising that setting it to red made them not work at all if they wanted to all be "teal".  You said green is good though... does blue also work?  I suspect it will

Yes, blue does work. And when I switch it to red, what you said happens; they all don't show up except number one.

 

[DrMikeNZ]

Frequently cheap RGB strips are made by soldering together offcuts to make longer pieces. These solder joints frequently break taking out one or more colour channels. I have had to resolder and repair several RGB strips.

Alternatively there can be issues with the controller, if a channel is overloaded it could blow the circuit and stop it working. It sounds like you have a connection issue on the red channel somewhere in the circuit. Check for weak solder points in the strips and improperly connected pieces along the path, focus around where the LEDS stop working in the chain.

 

15M is quite long, is the controller rated for that power draw?

[Hot_Swap_Fries]

10 hours ago, DrMikeNZ said:

Frequently cheap RGB strips are made by soldering together offcuts to make longer pieces. These solder joints frequently break taking out one or more colour channels. I have had to resolder and repair several RGB strips.

Alternatively there can be issues with the controller, if a channel is overloaded it could blow the circuit and stop it working. It sounds like you have a connection issue on the red channel somewhere in the circuit. Check for weak solder points in the strips and improperly connected pieces along the path, focus around where the LEDS stop working in the chain.

 

15M is quite long, is the controller rated for that power draw?

I never used all fifteen meters to be clear; that's just what they supplied. Probably should have said that. I tried looking around and everything looks fine to me..

[Hot_Swap_Fries]

Thanks for the help everybody! I got things fixed, the strip on the top decided it wanted to kek out. I replace it and got it working now.