Flaky thin led strip
Just got an ultra thin digital LED strip last month. Worked great connected to a Spikenzielabs Rainbow Light Show at home, took the combo to school (I teach) to demo RGB colors for a class.
Looks like in the transport to school, which wasn't rough, the first in pixel has gone flaky. Now the strip only works if I hold the first second section of the tape (from solder to first pixel) between my fingers. (Tested the Light Show with other strips). Strip is either off, flaky (sticks at one color) or behaves correctly.
Wondering the best strategy to debug and fix the strip. Cut off the first LED and solder new leads? Can't really alligator clip the pads past the first LED given the thin strip. Have postponed adding the JST connector for now.
Comments
Ah, sorry to hear that they are giving you trouble- we are also finding them a little more fragile than we would like. Depending on your soldering skills, it might actually be easiest to wire the data input directly to the input of the first LED, to try and circumvent the problematic part of the strip.
If you can't get it working, let me know and we can get a replacement to you.
Cut the first LED off at the line, moved the leads to those pads, and it works.
I think the first LED separated from the tape when the tape bent, and my smd soldering skills were not sufficient to reattach it. I can throw that in an envelope if you want to look at it.
Glad to hear you got it going! Thanks- If you can take a picture, it would be interesting to look at.