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sowbug / G35Arduino

An Arduino library for GE Color Effects G-35 holiday lights.
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White Color Value #7

Closed spydergt1 closed 12 years ago

spydergt1 commented 12 years ago

If I am understanding the code correctly in G35 White is defined as (channel max, channel max, channel max. ), which I take to be 15,15,15. There was some discussion on the orginal deepdarc post about only using 13,13,13 for white because the stock controller only used these values. It was speculated that the LEDs may have overheating issues if left at 15,15,15 for long periods. Any thoughts on this?

sowbug commented 12 years ago

My experience is that 15, 15, 15 is inconsistently pinkish rather than white, and borderline ugly. I have a feeling it's exceeding current limits so that the blue LED (highest voltage drop) is getting a bit starved. Though now that I think about it, that should lead to a yellowish tint, not pink (RGB - B = RG = yellow). At any rate, yeah, 15/15/15 is at best aesthetically annoying, and as you say possibly damaging.

My lights are down for the season. Can you let me know whether 13, 13, 13 looks better? And if so, I'd be happy to take your patch.

spydergt1 commented 12 years ago

So I was playing with the basic code and uploading a lights.fill_color to make string all one color. Red, Blue Green all look fine but when I upload white or warmwhite the color is all over the place. Some look light pink, others very pink and some look just fine. Also as I understand it the first variable of the function is the bulb at which the fill starts. This works fine of value 0 to 14 but when I use 15 to higher bulbs 0 and on start comming on again.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong here

spydergt1 commented 12 years ago

Answering my own question the issue is somewhere in how I set up the power supply. When i splice in the old controller and adapter to it all the colors look just fine. The setup I made has another 5v 3a adapter plugged into the Arduino and the V+, Data , and V- plugged into the 5v power pin, pin 13 data pin and ground power pin respectivly.

Any suggestions on a better setup?

sowbug commented 12 years ago

The pink you're describing sounds identical to what I mentioned in my January 5 comment. How is what you're describing different from what I described?

Your original suggestion when you filed this issue was to limit white to 0xC, 0xC, 0xC. How has that worked out?

spydergt1 commented 12 years ago

If when you desribed it as "inconsistently pinkish" you mean that when the whole string is filled with one color it looks more like a jumble of 3 or 4 colors than its the same issue. Setting to 0xC, 0xC, 0xC resulted in a inconsistantly yellowish light. I have been resistant to cutting the pigtail which goes from the stock controller to the stock power supply but I may go ahead and try using that and just connecting the grounds of the controller and power supply together and not run the power though the controller.

sowbug commented 12 years ago

Sounds like the same as my experience. Let us know if you figure it out. Personally, I don't run all-white because it looks boring, especially for hardware that's RGB-capable.

Note that there are a few problems with your power setup.

  1. The Arduino is speced to require 6-12V on the power jack. This is because there's a significant voltage drop in the 5V regulator. So if you're supplying only 5V to the Arduino, it's almost certainly squeaking by on something like 4V. The ATmega will run mostly fine on that voltage, but the lights most definitely want the full 5V -- particularly the blue lights.
  2. Even if you supplied 6V or more, I suspect the voltage regulator on the Arduino isn't going to be happy with more than maybe 300ma being drawn from it, and these lights will try to suck out 1.6A on full white. My personal observation is that the USB plug on the Arduino is more of a pass-through, so if you have a beefy USB power supply, then your current wiring setup will work.

Keep your existing wiring, but run another wire from the power supply's positive lead directly to V+ on the lights. It'll be happier.

Finally, let's try to keep this issue on-topic. If you have a support request like "why aren't my lights working right?" please enter it separately.

spydergt1 commented 12 years ago

I was running a 12V 1A power supply but the voltage regulator heated up so much and so quickly the board would malfunction after a few minutes. I will let you know if I can produce a consistant white.

sowbug commented 12 years ago

Please enter a new issue if you'd like to keep discussing stuff other than the proper values for displaying white. See problem #2 on my last comment why the regulator is overheating.