search

mcqn / my-babys-got-led

Simple ESP8266 board to drive WS2812 LED strips
Other
17 stars 1 forks source link

Can connecting LEDs the wrong way round kill the LEDs? #26

Open amcewen opened 2 years ago

amcewen commented 2 years ago

I don't think it should be catastrophic if you connect the LEDs the wrong way round, but there are two of the reels of 5m LEDs we bought recently that have faults on the first LED or first few LEDs where they illuminate white.

On the reel with a few white LEDs, the rest all function fine. On the reel with a single white LED the rest don't illuminate.

It's possible the LEDs were just DOA, but there's a small chance they failed when they were connected up backwards (which possibly blew the fuse on the board too)

It'd be good to check (we can use the single-white-LED reel, as that'll need the first LED cutting off anyway) if that's the case.

huffeec commented 2 years ago

I removed the first LED from the single LED strip and connected it to a board. No lights came on.

Connecting a flying data lead to contacts further down the strip didn't make any difference, still no lights came on. This was true using a data feed from the header pins and from the terminal socket.

Using a 5v line on the din pad it was possible to light single LEDs on the strip, so the lights are not completely dead, but there is definitely an issue on the data line.