Getting started guide?

scottberryscottberry
in BlinkyTape Troubleshooting

I have a LED panel and a blinkytape controller. I can't find a getting started guide, but it seemed fairly straight forward. I assumed if I gave the controller micro USB power from a wall wart and gave 5v power to the panel's power input then I would get some sort of result? I am going to connect the controller to my computer now to see what I can do there with the software. But, I noticed the controller was getting really hot just plugged in for a few seconds. What am I doing wrong?

Comments

  • scottberryscottberry

    Humm... even when I just plug it in to my Macbook with a standard USB cable the thing gets extremely hot and doesn't seem to be detected at all.

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    Hi Scott,

    Can you share a little more information about the LED panel that you are using, and a photo of your setup if possible? There are a couple of things that might cause this:

    1. Check the number of LEDs on the panel- If the panel has a lot of LEDs (over 128 or so), the power draw will start to be quite large, so we recommend using an external power supply to power the panels.
    2. Check the connector wiring- some manufacturers assemble their connectors backwards, and need to be re-wired before connecting to the BlinkyTape controller. Since it's getting hot really quickly, I would suspect that this might be the issue.

    If you have a link to the panel you're using, that would be good to look at too.

  • scottberryscottberry

    Well, taking the panel out of the equation the controller gets extremely hot when just connected to my Macbook (nothing else connected to the controller) and the Macbook gives a warning about the USB device using too much power and it doesn't seem to detect the controller anywhere.

  • Matt MetsMatt Mets

    It's possible that the controller could have been damaged by the panel, do you remember how it was hooked up?

  • scottberryscottberry

    The panel has a 3 pin input (which I hooked up to the controller) and a 5v input (which I hooked up to a wall wart 5v source). I then pugged the panel in to a USB power adapter. Seems like that is the proper way to power it, no? I couldn't find any sort of getting started guide or manual.

    The panel is a generic 128x8 addressable array, I believe. It works fine with the arduino nano and my development board could power the whole thing (I think mainly because I'm only using a few pixels at a time but I still ran the entire FastLED rainbow test library without issue).

    I sent an email to support (maybe that's you?) and didn't hear back. I went ahead and started using some arduino's I have for this project because it's timely and I didn't hear back. So maybe I can just return this or I guess get an exchange (I don't really have a use for it now).

  • scottberryscottberry

    Do I just need to dispute my card charge? Support doesn't respond and this forum is no help.

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