LED strips for dummies

Hardware
101

Have you had problems with re-flashing? I've been using ESP-8266's for ages and never encountered a failure. My test board, which I use to try out different peripherals and mods to my software framework, has been re-programmed hundreds of times now, and has never failed.

I haven't checked the specs, but I would expect the write cycle limits to be in the tens or hundreds of thousands.

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102

I have not had one fail as yet, but I have one that I have used extensively, likely 1000+ flashes, it is a few years old, 3 maybe. I have read several times now, at various points via Google, that some people have had units fail as they approach the 3000 flash mark. I am sure that some variance is likely, as the technology changes and improves, but I would not be surprised if my oldest unit failed at about 3000.

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103

That's useful to know, and it's a lot less than I would have expected. I've seen figures of 10,000 to 100,000 write cycles as the limit/spec, which could be used up quickly if you were doing regular writes of data to flash (which I don't) but will take a long time to reach via reprogramming.

Still, these devices are pretty cheap, so it's not a big loss if one fails. It's just the work of replacing it that would be a nuisance.

104

@BartButenaers Just noticed on my YT feed and it reminded me of this topic: 7 Common LED Strip FAILS and How To Avoid Them (sorry if this was already posted)

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105

Started watching this myself. It even goes through the bending vs. connectors topic just discussed. :slightly_smiling_face:

.. and after watching it completely, it almost summarises this whole topic. TheHookUp really knows on how to keep things concise.

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106

His channel is really useful for all sorts of hints and tips. I've learned quite a lot from various videos.

107

Nice to know that I'd missed all of the pitfalls when setting up the kitchen lights - apart from the controller. That still needs some work.

The alu channels are really good.

Another hint for getting the strips to stick with their own tape is to clean the surface with IPA before attaching.

108

I didn't. I sticked a LIFX strip to go around the kitchen cupboard bottom panel. It was good for a week or two, then it started falling down. It had to circle two corners and go over several aluminum L shaped holders of the panel. I wish I knew and had some of those holding clips. I tried securing it with white electrical tape from various spots but it kept falling until the strip didn't stick at all itself. I gave up and decided to settle with the pale lamps that came with the apartment for now (>1 year). :unamused:

109

Oops. Even when things come with genuine 3M tape, I found the surface still needs to be totally clean. Also, I suspect that a lot of the cheap strips don't come with what they claim :woozy_face:

Electrical tape doesn't have much stick except to itself. Never worth using it unless you need electrical insulation.

110

Yep, two failures there. I had replaced the original 3M tape with some generic double sided tape as the original had got dusty from previous usage. I didn't clean the surface either as at that time I had not yet heard about cleaning surfaces before sticking a tape. :joy:

This I knew but it was falling down from the tail end and the section was visible from certain angles so I needed it to be same color as the painted wall where the tail part was attached. :slight_smile:

111

Clean with beer? (India Pale Ale) I can see drinking it first to make the task seem easier But wasting it as a cleaner...sad. :sob: ( :rofl:)

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112

Try not to confuse the 2 if you have them both in the house. Thankfully they are quite easy to tell apart.

IPA generally comes in cans with interesting brewery names printed clearly on the side. Drinking 1/2 a litre is generally a very pleasant experience.

On the other hand IPA comes in translucent plastic bottles and will kill you if you drink 1/2 a litre.

And in case other people ever bother to read to the end of this thread and are now utterly confused:

India Pale Ale <> Isopropanol Alcohol

Though admitedly, both are alcohol-based. :smiling_imp:

Oh, and another difference is that IPA doesn't burn or explode. IPA however most certainly can do both of those things!

Hopefully that has cleared things up :sunglasses:

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113

In server infrastructure sites, to clean surfaces we used naphthalene. It would strip all kinds of stuff. One of the few things that would get rid of those wheel tracks on raised floor panels! But you could only use it on metal surfaces, a few other materials. Of course years later it was placed on the suspected cancer causing list. But it would clean old computer cabinets, gummed up server slide rails, etc, better than anything else I have used since. Even would take bugs off clear glass panels when nothing else would. Now how a bug got into a server room, only to impact a cabinet door panel, heck if I know. But the stuff did it.

114

I've played with tuya-convert and tazmotizer. IMHO neither are documented worth a crap.

I've got two devices from Amazon on the Tasmota supported list. Neither work with tuya-convert. The hack that allows over-the-air flashing of new firmware seems to be broken with the currently shipping firmware. The issue is reported on the github, with no solutions so far.

I soldered TX, RX, & Gnd pins to the pads on the Arilux LC06 Module I got. Its nice because it has a push-button switch to GPIO 00 to put it in flash mode when power is applied -- hold the button down apply power release after a second or so.

I've got it flashed, problem is I can't make any sense at all out of the commands. The web interface has 4 "sliders" and what they actually are supposed to do is unclear at best. Monitoring its MQTT status messages shows that each control change makes multiple parameter values different.

Can some one give me a simple example of the MQTT command to set a given PWM value on each of the five channels {R,G,B,WW,W}?

Arilux
Arilux2268Ɨ4032 1.98 MB

Edit: Minor point, but the plastic case is "roomy" enough that I don't have to remove the little header I soldered on to put the case back together. In theory I'll never need to use it again since over-the-air flashing should be possible once the initial tasmota firmware is running.

One thing that did trip me up is you need to find the access point it creates and connect to it with a cellphone to get the IP address it used (mine was 192.168.4.1) then connect to this address with browser and enter your real WiFi SSID and Password. Once the devece reboots you can then use the Tasmotizer "Find IP" button to see where it lives on your network.

Edit2: There is a config window that you can open in Tasmotizer with settings for wifi etc. but everything is "grayed out" so it doesn't work.

I generally lock these little devices to the initial IP supplied by my router to the MAC address of the device in my router settings so they don't move around.

115

I don't have personal experience of the LC06 driver but note that Tasmota is not the only custom firmware option if you find its MQTT interface unintuitive. Espurna seems to list it supported also for example.

116

I'm aware of Espurna and a couple of others, but I just need an example of some valid MQTT pub commands as I haven't got anything but power on/off to work :frowning:
As I said the built in web interface changes colors and brightness with the sliders each change adjusts multiple parameters at ones.

I though Tasmota was supposed to "abstract" the device and use a unified set of commands for the various devices.

The docs said the config should be:

{"NAME":"Arilux LC06","GPIO":[17,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,38,39,37,41,40],"FLAG":0,"BASE":18}

Which is what I used.

In the photo the "color hue" slider was set to a pinkish-orange but the lights are clearly very bluish-white.

117

I thought it cannot be ever hard and then skimmed through couple of pages of Tasmota documentation looking for a simple JSON interface. Maybe it is there but I'm not digging in those comma separated messages. Too much thinking right after waking up. :sleeping:

118

Could this node be useful? https://flows.nodered.org/node/node-red-contrib-tasmota

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119

Yes installing these nodes and monitoring with mosquitto_sub let me get the "real" MQTT commands.

For my purposes:
mosquitto_pub -t "cmnd/tasmota/Color1" -m "305060DEAD"

is the command I'd use to animate. Each of the 5 hex digit pairs in the message controls one channel: RRGGBBWWCW

I'll use this tasmota light node for my initial animations with node-red. Ultimately I plan to permute the three RGB strip colors of multiple strips with the 5 Arilux PWM channels to get a more "complicated" ever changing display.

The web display sliders worked OK once I realized I'd transposed R & G when I connected my strip and the bottom three sliders were HSB controls. The top slider was doing something that turned off the RGB presumably to adjust the "white" color temperature.

Its a bummer that you currently can't use tuya-convert to install tasmota with currently shipping tuya firmwares. So if you don't have a USB to serial converter (<$10 on Amazon ) and/or can't solder, you appear stuck with the stock remote controller and Chinese phone app.

Edit: Is there a way to turn off the status messages? Set and forget is my design model. For home automation these are crucial for coherent status of the interacting components, but for me they are just useless bandwidth wasting chatter. I don't even want unique device name/topics as I can envision having multiple controllers running the same display to put the multiple strips close to available outlets.

120

Yep, create your own custom firmware :smiling_imp: I always end up going back to that anyway, I know I'll eventually find something that is just too annoying to work with when using one of the "standard" firmwares.