I have had great success with WLED when I made my juke box. Been running for over a year now successfully.
Also using an ESP32 but with the signal coming from the output of the Raspberry Pi DAC sound card for sound to light signal. I split the one channel off to share with the ESP32 and then I fitted an inline volume control between the sound card and the amplifier so the input signal for the WLED is consistent otherwise the sound to light effect cant handle changes in volume and loosing its effect which I found needed the gain to be adjusted carefully to get the best effect.
Set the gain in the raspberry software (in my case the exceptionally good “Fruitbox” highly recommended program.) Also, having the inline volume control which is mounted over the touch screen, you can control maximum volume of the amp which is carefully locked inside the cabinet. Stops drunken party revelers trying to blow your speakers. My wife in particular seems to have the uncontrollable urge to max out the volume after a few shooters when ever smokie comes on, “Alice, who the #$*k is Alice” shouted at the top of her voice.
I had the pleasure of getting to climb on a ladder to fix the LEDs on Sunday.
Took the opportunity to update the firmware on the espixelstick and to put furrule crimps on the cables.
A windstorm last month caused a crepe myrtle branch to pull on the cable going to the end of the LEDs. It pulled it hard enough to rip the solder pad off of the strip. I replaced the first few LEDs with new ones. Then I filled up the end of the strip with hot glue to help keep it from being moved. I also did a better job of make the connection from the cable to the strip.
After soldering, I put a bunch of hot glue on it, then pushed the heatshrink over the hot glue. When the hot air gun shrank the heatshrink, it re-melted the hotglue and made a nice solid little connection.
I need to pull the other Espixelstick down and update it’s firmware now too. I also think it has a loose connection going to the pixelstick, so I’ll add the crimped connectors to it while I’m doing it too.
You can get marine heat shrink that already has the hot glue lining. That way you don’t have to worry about the hot glue prematurely shrinking the tube.
There are also “heat shrink splices” that have solder and heat shrink all-in-one. Slip the wires in from each end, heat them up until the solder flows (the center is clear enough to see when that happens) and the ends shrink and glue things together.
I borrowed a 24’ ladder (from a neighbor, super convenient) and fixed my lights today too. The break was right at the junction I made. It must have been under tension and the solder didn’t hold.
I just soldered some new jumpers across and used the hot glue/heat shrink I have. If it fails again, I will try to use something more flexible, like stranded wire, and some better weatherproofing.
The plastic that covers the leds doesn’t have any yellowing I can see. Hopefully I will get another couple of years out of it.
Jeff, I’m guessing with seasonal changes a long strip of neopixels can shrink/expand quite a bit along it’s length. Those forces may have prematurely fatigued that inflexible solder joint. Making that joint with some small loops of magnet wire or similar would allow the strips to expand/contract without breaking the wires.
Yeah. If it breaks again, I will do that. I have to do the original plan again. For Science! If it was something settling after the initial install, then it will be fine.
I put some electrical tape under mine. I had an issue with one of my fixes shorting out on the metal underneath the strip.
I can’t tell from your picture, but did you just do a solder bridge? I use a small piece of wire to make my bridge. Then I pookey the whole thing with the hot glue to hold it together.
I used some white heat shrink and hot glue to keep it insulated once I had it resoldered. You can see another joint a few leds to the right. This was part of a patch I made during the original install because there was something wrong.
I keep a bunch of legs from through hole components like LEDs in my parts bin. I used some of those to bridge the gap. But they don’t flex.
Another year. Another stack of dead pixels I need to climb up and replace.
I’m considering ripping out the current strips and replacing them with the ‘wired’ pixels. I know the pixel density would be less, but maybe they’d be more reliable?
Who knows. It looks to be about $300 in materials to do that using the PVC pixel holders you can buy.
Is it already that time of year again where I convince myself that I want permanent Christmas lights, spend a few hours researching, find all the materials I need, and still not do anything about it??
Well, I took it to the next step and purchased everything two years ago and still haven’t installed them. I ran into issues figuring out how to get power cleanly to the second story dormers and stalled out.
Do you already have specific ones in mind? I’m thinking about switching over after seeing you, @jeffeb3 and others have to replace sections. Also are you going to stick with the ESPixelStick or something else if you go that route?
Don’t go cheap on these leds, i once did and kept replacing individual leds, because red or green stopped working. Red never stopped working though. I also have a lot of 7 year old square leds that still all perform good. These were not cheap though. (Ray wu)
Yes. Like those. But the one’s I’m looking at have a 3" spacing. The PVC mount I’m looking at is spaced every 1", but I’m not sure what final spacing I want to go with.
I haven’t done the math to see how many strands I’d need to reach across my house.
My only concern is I’m not sure how waterproof the JST-SM connectors are.
I have only had that one solder joint fail for me. I haven’t had a single dead pixel (besides maybe the first one).
I tried them the other day and they were totally functional. So I am hopeful they are finally permanent (now that I own a ladder to reach the whole way).
I installed mine the first week of January. I had some questions from the neighbors, but I regret nothing.
Prime days has ws2811 strings on sale, so I bought a set. I already have a 12v30a power supply available. I also pick up some different wled controllers to try out.
I’m going to pick up some J channel from home depot this weekend to drill some holes in.
Parts came in. Hooking up the new WLED controller was stupidly easy. I was able to very quickly hookup all 10 strings of lights and verify all the pixels work.
Showed two strings laying across the floor to the wife and her only response was, “those aren’t just going to hang like normal lights on the house are they?”… No, babe. I’ll be mounting them under the eaves.
I ran into issues figuring out how to get power cleanly to the second story dormers and stalled out.