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Qrome / marquee-scroller

Marquee Scroller Clock News Weather and More
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2867294
MIT License
328 stars 159 forks source link

Adding a capacitor to the LED matrix increases the system reliability #203

Open leliep opened 2 years ago

leliep commented 2 years ago

After having a lot of hassle with distorted LEDs in the matrix and unreliable startup behavior after power-on I added a 10uF capacitor to the power pins of the first LED matrix element, see attached picture. This was a great improvement, startup always perfect and not a single scrambled display.

(and, btw, thanks for this nice project!)

IMG_7115

Qrome commented 2 years ago

A capacitor on the the power is always a great idea. Thanks for sharing. Looks great and easy to add.

dexter2111 commented 2 years ago

I had the same issue. Now is working well. Thank you.

finnie2006 commented 2 years ago

Will a 1K ressistor or 10k or 220K work?

leliep commented 2 years ago

Will a 1K ressistor or 10k or 220K work?

Well, a resistor is not a capacitor. So I don’t think it should work as intended…

finnie2006 commented 2 years ago

oh yea, lol close instantly

leliep commented 2 years ago

Sorry, didn’t want to close this. Regarding the resistor, do you have some constructive input? Always trying to learn… ;-)

finnie2006 commented 2 years ago

What do you mean with constructive input? (I am dutch)

leliep commented 2 years ago

Constructive like helpful like constructief

What I mean is that I don’t have any idea what a resistor instead of a capacitor would do. Maybe you can help me to understand…

Groetjes vanuit Duitsland :-)

finnie2006 commented 2 years ago

I just ordered capacitors 😃

mrouillard commented 2 years ago

What I mean is that I don’t have any idea what a resistor instead of a capacitor would do. Maybe you can help me to understand…

Have a look here for a very simplified introduction: https://science4fun.info/resistors-capacitors-and-inductors/

davsav commented 2 years ago

What I mean is that I don’t have any idea what a resistor instead of a capacitor would do. Maybe you can help me to understand…

Have a look here for a very simplified introduction: https://science4fun.info/resistors-capacitors-and-inductors/

A capacitor stores a charge, like a small battery except it can charge and discharge much faster than the battery.

One use for a capacitor is to smooth out a power supply.

The purpose of adding a capacitor to the LED matrix between the power and ground pins is so that the capacitor can help power the display as suddenly turning on a lot of the leds at once draws a lot of power and the voltage regulator on the D1 Mini may not be able to provide that much power that fast, which causes it to crash as it gets starved of power.

Using a resistor would likely make things worse as a resistor uses power.