Hello
I have set up the LED project from BRUH Automation using a NodeMCU and it works a treat. However I want to run about 10-15m of the digital LED strips and I bought one of these and tested it yesterday. On a shorter 5m the lights are all over the shop, flickering different colours on different parts of the joined strips. So I am guessing I have bought the wrong thing?
Can anyone offer some advice on what I should buy please? I am in England
Cheers
Mark
If you bought the same lights as BRUH Automation, then this power supply will work. Keep in mind each LED at full brightness draws about 0.06A (60mA) which means this power supply can handle about 278 LEDs at full brightness. Also you will have to inject power at multiple points along the strip to keep the LEDs from dimming/changing color due to power loss across the strip. Lastly, if your LEDs are flickering, then there may be a floating ground somewhere causing interference on the data line. Also, the ESP8266 doesn’t have any SPI hardware, so everything is done by the bit-bang method on a digital pin and the FastLED library is affected by system interrupts for things like WiFi or other functions on the controller. Add the following line before the include of the library: “#define FASTLED_ALLOW_INTERRUPTS 0”
That’s why for controlling leds I usually use 2 microcontrollers - one for wifi/mqtt/etc and one for doing the led control so i don’t have any hickups.
Example: Esp8266, arduino, wifi, mqtt led controller - Album on Imgur
I’ll try to find the code and post it on github.
thanks guys. Got some more cable arriving this week so will test the injecting power along the strip before ditching this power supply. I was expecting it to dim the last few meters of LEDs but they had a crazy reaction, probably due to lack of power as you said.
I had this exact issue and it turned out to be a bad ground. Make sure the NodeMCU is grounded to the power supply properly.
I had a similar problem.
The fix was where it says in the code: #define NUM_LEDS
You need to put the number of drivers that are in the strip and not the number of LEDs on the strip. In my setup my strip has a driver chip per 3 LEDs, I have 900 LEDs (so far) so my code says: #define NUM_LEDS 300
The other suggestions about injecting power along the strips is super important as is the grounding. I also found out that my strip preferred not to have the 5v to 3.3v bi-directional level shifter but check the specs of your strip first.
thank you… ok so what does this mean? 
I followed the wiring diagram and am I missing something?
You may be fine, not sure how yours is wired. In my case i was powering nodemcu by usb and not connecting ground pin of nodemcu to the ground in PSU, causing issues.
i should also add that i am using a 12v 10a power supply
This one, not that it matters really
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01E6RMASC/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_6TTPzbTYPEFV4
And i did not experience any dimming/problems on a 5m strip with power only injected into the one end (through the harness)
You mention you want 15 meters so i agree with everyone’s recommendation, but for testing the one strip, i still think it should be behaving correctly even with power connected to one end only. Do you have the correct IC identified in the sketch? Mine was WS2811
thank you. These are what i bought. 60led/m
i think I need to start again and check my wires etc as it all “looks” fine
OK just spend the last hour fannying on and checking and replacing wires. Tested with 1 strip of about 1.5M of LEDs. Exactly the same issue using the power supply listed above. LEDS power on, 5 seconds off. great, then power n via HA, change a setting LEDS flicker and go crazy and won’t power off via HA. It is as if the data signal is getting screwed.
So I go back to my old power supply (see photo) and it all works perfectly. I am I doing something really stupid? Then I plus this supply into my patio LEDs which are about 5M again, perfect!
I have #define NUM_LEDS set correctly
I just know I need more power when I want to run the 15m and thought this was the answer… getting frustrated.
Interesting. Did you check the voltage on the power supply prior to connecting everything and it is working fine?
I have no means of testing the voltage 
I am starting to think it is either faulty or not the right thing…
You dont have a multimeter you can borrow?
You could just return it but it would be good to see the voltage.
well when even with the lower powered adaptor started producing odd LED lights I knew I was a total idiot. I am posting this in case anyone else is as stupid as me. It all worked fine when I had 1-2m of 3 core (+ - data) but I had moved the power to round the side of the house where my outdoor socket is, which was a run of 5m of of the nice thin wire to the LEDs.
My guess is the power/data drop off was too much for either power supply and hence why I had the issues??
yep, the longer the distance is between power supply and LEDs, the more voltage drop-off there is. Thicker wire will have lower resistance and less voltage drop-off.
Would standard 3 core electrical wire work better or what would I need to amplify the data signal please?
What is the distance that we are talking about? The easiest solution is thicker wire but need to know the distance to know what guage wire.
It would be about 7m.
might as well use my old thread for this… I am looking to install thee in my kitchen, but the way the power is already setup, I would probably need 2 use 2 Power supplied, but the same data cable.
Can you use 2 PSUs on 2 sections but controlled via the same NodeMCU data pin or can you link 2 NodeMCUs so that they work together?
