Dug out an 8 LED ring, and hooked it up to the Arduino.
Uploaded the example code
And…
Led 1 is flashing red just like I asked it to.
Sooooooooooo
Time to rip apart the strip I think and see what happens… And if I get to go to bed tonight.
I have a spare roll of the wsp8211 lights, so I think I am just going to start totally over and pretend Bob is standing over my shoulder
And got that ring to do the full colour pattern program I wanted as well!
Success!!!
Wooooooo!
Glad you got it working, please tell us what the problem was.
I think my posts were useless in trying to help you get it working.
So, definitely fried the board with too much voltage.
Then when I took the strips apart, ran through them slowly and they were all in line correctly, all gnd power and data wires were in the correct spot…
So, I just got a brand new strip and started again.
Did a 50cm strip alone, and tested, then added 1 more strip at a time testing in between. (Yes, shoulda done that first time), and they all kept working.
So at the moment I have 3 options for what went wrong.
1: somewhere along the line I just soldered a data line badly
2: I somehow fried something in the lights in my first attempt.
3: the lights were dodgy in the first place (AliExpress ones), because the ones that did work, are dodgy too. It took me 2 hours of messing around with the sketch to work out why my yellows and oranges were coming out purple. The lights don’t seem to be RGB… They are RBG. (255, 80, 0) Was coming out purple, so I literally just coded random combinations, and finally (255, 0, 80) came out yellowy orange
Next week after I finish this project and have a nap, I’ll test the strips and see which it was.
I’ll post a pic of the finishes wings tonight.
But seriously, many many thanks to all of you
There is no need to change the code. Just select the correct ‘Color order’ setting in WLED Settings to match your strings. RBG is very common for ws281x strings.
Very glad to hear you ended up getting it working 
Hi Matt
Glad to see my criticism did some good. You started in a logical manner in small bits and got a result instead of running in circles.
Lesson learned. Start with an adequate power supply and make sure of correct connections. Without such a power supply nothing works.
Any LED strings I have used so far have been RBG.
Cheers Bob
Rob, your criticism was great. Not judgey, and very clear.
I know costume people annoy people with more specialised (and complete) skill sets, because we usually jump to big projects with little experience. That is generally a reality of costuming though, to learn all the skills I need to use “properly” and from basics up, well… It’d be years before I can do anything.
Just as a quick run down, aside from the electronics and programming, I need to design in CAD, 3d print in 3 different materials, post process, paint (hand, airbrush and spray paint), weather, make plastic look like reflective steel, the obvious artistic vision, pattern make, sew (hand and machine), for the wings I researched 3 different types of extruded foam and trial and error them, sculpt clay and resin for casting, resin pouring, wire sculpting, crocheting butchers twine, thermo plastic, a teeny bit of carpentry, and how to put ice coffee in a camelback so I don’t need to sleep, casting latex prosthetics, wig styling, make up (normal and airbrushed alcohol based makeup) and god knows what else.
So really, you have been very understanding of someone jumping in over their head, and you all 100% helped make this possible
As for the LEDs being RBG instead of RGB, I am sure I could have looked at the spec sheet, but it was 3am by that point and I have had about 8 hours of sleep total in the last 6 days… My brain was not working so well.
Also, I knew I could switched colours in WLED, but after I fried my ESP32 I had to switch to Arduino as that’s all I could get my hands on… Which also meant a last minute crash course in programming in C.
Progress update for anyone still interested in what I am doing
It weighs a ton, but I can also run around in 55kg of steel plate armour, so I’ll cope, and book in massage for the day after
Hi Matt
Good to see you got it all sorted.
You have been pretty busy. Unfortunately this leads to a 'Jack of all trades and master of none" (old saying) situation which is OK in a way as long as you can get help regarding different tasks and are able to put it all together at the end of the day. Often the main thing in this situation is knowing where to look.
I think you might have learned a few more things during this exercise. One of the main things when seeking help remotely as in a forum such as this is attention to detail and accuracy. This avoids going off on some tangent due to incorrect info like an incorrect diagram that was known to be so. Like 5V on the 3.3V point and not researching the LED both happening together would have been extremely frustrating and just about causing a hair pulling situation. The voltage mistake was a bit unforgiving, like destroying the board (not worth trying to repair). The LEDs you could be forgiven for as you may not have known about the RBG/RGB different types available. But reading the info would or should have sorted this and saved what could have been a prolonged frustrating period trying to work out why the colours come out different.
You were a bit unfortunate with the voltage error. If the magic smoke had come out of the board the presence of a problem here would have been obvious sooner.
But all finished up well. I think you may have learned a couple of valuable lessons so that is a good outcome. Please give us all a look at the finished masterpiece. You have obviously put a great amount of effort into this project and I congratulate you on completion.
Cheers Bob
Yeah, mistakes happen. You kinda just roll with it.
For me the option is go big and over my head, make mistakes and pull hair, but stay motivated. Or start small, learn and build up, and get bored before I do anything fun.
Motivation is the name of the game, as long as you can deal with the consequences.
As for the jack of all trades, I’ll take that as a compliment.
Like most of those phrases it was condensed down into its opposite meaning, to make us good little capitalist workers.
The full phrase is “jack of all trades, master of none, but often times better than a master of one”
Just like blood is thicker than water means friends come before blood family, and curiosity killed the cat means to be curious because satisfaction brings you back again.
My standard course of thanks is wine, this being the internet though that’s hard
But if anyone that helped would like, DM me your email address and I can hook you up with a lifetime 30% discount of all of treasury wine estates and 40% off Penfolds portfolio’s.
Because despite all that my “real job” is wine
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