blinking

[hell1337hound]

hey the unit is blinking both when its on and when it isnt outputting

When its not outputting it will blink once in white and seems to be random

when it is outputting it will go to black for .3 of a second and then come back to the same state

Any ideas?

[clarkwmcd]

I am having the same problem. LEDs flicker for a split second at random times.

[clarkwmcd]

It has been resolved in this fork

https://github.com/bbacskay/RGBW-Sunrise-Animation-Neopixel-/tree/platformio

[ghost]

I have the same issue on a NodeMCU 1.0. In the mqtt logs of my broker i could see reconnects.
After further investigation it turned out the module is rebooting due to a hardware watchdog reset.

A lot of people suggested to add delays or yield() to the code to ensure that background logic e.g. of the wifi controller can run properly. In my case wether dely nor yield did improve the situation even with the statement added almost everywhere.

So my conclusion would be that it is caused by one of the referenced libraries.

@clarkwmcd The provided fork indeed solved the issue. In my case it was no drop in replacement. I had to do additional changes to make the SK6812 led strip work. This fork uses the NeoPixelBus library. I would be curious if this was the solution for the issue.

At least this wiki page states out why the old/other lib should not be used:
https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/wiki/Library-Comparisons

[clarkwmcd]

@huzergackl I am having some trouble with my led strip. What did you change with the code from the new fork?

[ghost]

I had the issue that the strip was not reacting at first.
At a maximum the first led turned on during startup of the esp with a random color and could not be disabled again.

I changed the bus initialization line from:
NeoPixelBus<NeoGrbwFeature, Neo800KbpsMethod> strip(NUM_LEDS, LED_PIN);
to:
NeoPixelBus<NeoGrbwFeature, NeoEsp8266Uart1800KbpsMethod> strip(NUM_LEDS);

With this method the led pin is ignored so i removed it from the parameter list of strip.
The data line has to be on GPIO2 for this configuration. This was working for me with the
disadvantage that i can't disable the blue led of the nodemcu anymore. As far as i read this
is also tied to gpio 2.

I had another look at the documentation today and found out that the generic
configuration "Neo800KbpsMethod" picks the board specific default "NeoEsp8266Dma800KbpsMethod".
The documentation states out that this only works with pin RXD0/GPIO3 and i had everything wired to pin 5 yesterday.

=> So using Neo800KbpsMethod with gpio3 might be worth a try and is probably the better solution if it works ^^

Here are the additional links i found:
https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/wiki/NeoPixelBus-object#neo-methods
https://github.com/Makuna/NeoPixelBus/wiki/ESP8266-NeoMethods#neoesp8266dma800kbpsmethod

[clarkwmcd]

@huzergackl you're a genius!! Switching to GPIO3 fixed all of my problems. Thanks for the help!

[skyej944]

Any luck with the original file? I had everything working at first now it blinks

[freddieleeman]

I would recommend switching to WLED. It has multiple effects including sunrise and sunset with native Home Assistant integration. Good luck!

[skyej944]

Thanks! I wasn't sure the sunrise function worked on WLED. At least not at set times