We Got A Problem
We were running up to the last few days of being able to bring the panel to playa.. We kept on adding more and more rows of LEDs to the panel.
We added on a second FadeCandy to the host and got to about 12 rows of LEDs... And that is where we started to run into issues..
As we were running more and more strips, there became more noise on the signal lines. This issue mixed with the distance that we were needing to run the control wires, started to cause the signal to get corrupted by the time it got to the strip.. This is the cable that goes from the FadeCandy, to CAT6, then to the distribution block, then split and sent to the 8 segments that the FadeCandy was controlling.. It became apparent that this method for signal distribution was not going to work, and my attempt to cheat and not having twisted pairs with ground signal, was a major issue.. The obvious solution is to double the amount of cables we need and use twisted pairs, but there is no guarantee that it will work any better..
So here are the options that we are considering:
Test the twisted pairs and see if that works any better.
Move the FadeCandys from a central location to the distribution, running a USB cable to the box as well.
Try a whole new approach to controlling the LEDs.
All we know right now is we are needing to finish packing, and after this week of running 110% trying to get this done, we need a little break and time to recover..