WLED 0.15.0 Introduces Flashing/Noise on GPIOs 1, 16 on QuinLED-Dig-Quad

[hacustom]

What happened?

After upgrading a QuinLED-Dig-Quad to WLED 0.15.0, LED segments on GPIOs 1 and 16 experience significant noise and flashing. An LED segment on GPIO 3 operates fine without any issue.

Segment 1 GPIO 3 - 629 LEDs
Segment 2 GPIO 1 - 161 LEDs
Segment 3 GPIO 16 - 171 LEDs

This particular setup has been running flawlessly for just over 3 years. The issue was immediately resolved by downgrading to WLED 0.14.3.

To Reproduce Bug

• Upgrade a QuinLED-Dig-Quad to WLED 0.15.0
• Activate any preset or animation
• Flashing/Noise is prominent on LED segments on GPIO 1 and 16

Expected Behavior

• No noise/flashing on any LED segment

Install Method

Binary from WLED.me

What version of WLED?

WLED 0.15.0 2412100

Which microcontroller/board are you seeing the problem on?

ESP32

Relevant log/trace output

I don't have any logs at the moment, I have since downgraded to WLED 0.14.3.  However, I would be more than happy to re-upgrade and capture any logs/traces/configs that would aid in troubleshooting.

Anything else?

This appears to be similar to report #3976. That was submitted for 0.15.0b2 and not the full release however.

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow this project's Code of Conduct

[blazoncek]

GPIO 1 & 16 will use RMT. RMT is susceptible to flickering in some circumstances.
0.15 added a lot of code that may make those circumstances more frequent.

GPIO 3 uses I2S.

[hacustom]

Interesting.

I had a spare Dig-Quad on hand, and I upgraded it to WLED 0.15.0 and configured the LED outputs to be identical as the main one for my house lights. I wired up a spare string of LEDs I had leftover and I'm seeing the same behavior as with my other - tons of flashing/noise. If I stick to a solid color, it's OK. There's a bunch of noise every time I change color but once it reaches the target color the noise stops. Any animation is unusable.

[hacustom]

Just for kicks, I setup my spare Dig-Quad from scratch, installing it from https://install.quinled.info/dig-quad/ just to see if it made any difference and it didn't.

[blazoncek]

If you want to test (and help with resolving) set up more than 4 outputs with less than 300 pixels each and report.

[eMeF1]

I encountered the same issue after upgrading to 0.15.0. There are 182 LEDs on GPIO 16, which are set to a solid orange-ish RGB[115,74,0] color. It's not apparent on solid white. I have a couple of dig2analog on GPIO 3, but I did not test whether the issue is also there. After downgrading to 0.14.3, the random flickering (every 30-60 seconds) issue is gone.

[blazoncek]

Periodic issue leads me to believe this may be network related.

[hacustom]

It's not a periodic issue. It is a 100% constant issue, 100% reproducible across multiple devices.

Any time there is ANY "color changing" activity - whether from changing a solid color to running an animation - the noise is present.

As an added experiment, I tested without connecting to any network and just using local control. Still present.

[hacustom]

If you want to test (and help with resolving) set up more than 4 outputs with less than 300 pixels each and report.

I will see if I can do that on the dig-quad as a second test.

[kylewilliams321]

Same issue from me and similar setup as original reporter

[intermittech]

If needed I can build a quick test setup and can troubleshoot on Discord too, apologies this made it through the beta somehow, I had not noticed in on any testing setups I had before. Let me know if you need anything!

[blazoncek]

Please test a set-up with at least 6 outputs (WS281x). You do not need to have actual LEDs connected or GPIOs attached. It is important to have GPIO 1, 3 & 16 as first 3 outputs and each output must not exceed 300 LEDs

[dokalma]

I had exactly the same problem on my digquad pushing 824 seedpixels per channel.

Went back to 14.3 and all was good

[hacustom]

If needed I can build a quick test setup and can troubleshoot on Discord too, apologies this made it through the beta somehow, I had not noticed in on any testing setups I had before. Let me know if you need anything!

Oh my goodness, PLEASE don't apologize! I have worked in IT & Software Dev for...ouch...nearly 30 years now?! I've been on both sides of bug reports more times than I can count, I actually have grown to love really gnarly bugs and digging into them.

Especially with you all that contribute to open source projects, the work you do is amazing and usually pretty damn thankless. The only intent behind my bug report is to share information and see if we can figure out the cause :)

I'm working on re-configuring my spare Dig-Quad right now to test out @blazoncek suggestion.

[hacustom]

OK, got my spare Dig-Quad setup like this:

6 LED Outputs, 190 LEDs on each output, WS281x, 30mA/12v.

Output 1 - GPIO 3
Output 2 - GPIO 16
Output 3 - GPIO 1
Output 4 - GPIO 4
Output 5 - GPIO 5
Output 6 - GPIO 13

I've been running a few different twinkle effects for ~10 minutes now without any apparent noise, using a single color and different color palettes just for testing.

[hacustom]

Just for kicks I deleted Output 6 and the noise was immediately re-introduced.

Edit Weird... I was playing around deleting and re-adding Output 6 and for a little while, things were working fine with only the 5 outputs. I deleted 2 more so that I was down to 3 outputs and then the noise started again.

[Jean-Luc-Hauser]

Same issues with the Quad and 12V WS2815 on version 0.15 : heavy noises and flickering with effects such as Dancing Shadows.

GPIO 3 - 152 LEDs (60/m)
GPIO 16 - 356 LEDs (144/m)
GPIO 15 - Relay

I have a 5V PS for the relay and the Quad board and 12V for the LEDS through the board.

And I was not able to use the relay (GPIO 15) since it was taken by the I2S audio interface.

I have 2 GLEDOPTO GL-C-015WL-M controllers that have no issues with the 0.15 release. I went back to 0.14.3 for now, was scared to damage the LEDs

[blazoncek]

with 6 outputs or more, 1st 8 are using I2S (parallel)
with 5 or less, 1st is using I2S (single) and 4 are using RMT.
may notify @Makuna if he has any clue what's different in NPB 2.8.0 compared to 2.7.4 in 0.14.4 regarding RMT

[travi]

I ran into what this sounds like with one of my digunos. I'm currently running 3 digunos and one digquad, but only saw this on one diguno and was able to fix it by swapping the esp from a spare diguno.

A detail that I noticed was unique on that instance was that I had the output order switched around so that the first output was mapped in wled as gpio 3 and the second to gpio 16 instead of the other way around, for whatever reason.

I imagine swapping the esp worked in my case only because that one had the outputs orders as gpio 16 then 3.

[promess]

I'm dealing with this same issue, except it's on a single ESP32. There are 260 LEDs in this configuration, all of which are in GPIO 16.

it's only the last section where I'm adding power back in after a split and it's after that point that the LEDs are misfiring. I've posted video of it flashing blue and red after a few minutes in the discord channel. It was working fine in 14.4. I'm not sure if I'm sending too much power and the additional power is fucking with it or something. Let me know if there's anything you need me to do.

[blazoncek]

FWIIW I'm using Dig-Quad with 16 (465), 1 (270), 3 (15) - in that order - with no flickering whatsoever.
Using generic ESP32 in Wemos D1 Mini size packaging from aliexpress.

EDIT: If anyone wants to test, here is my build with newer NPB 2.8.3.

[Makuna]

with 6 outputs or more, 1st 8 are using I2S (parallel) with 5 or less, 1st is using I2S (single) and 4 are using RMT. may notify @Makuna if he has any clue what's different in NPB 2.8.0 compared to 2.7.4 in 0.14.4 regarding RMT

The only real change with RMT between those versions is the ability to compile using IDF5. This was just some minor headers include changes to react to the IDF change but still outputs warnings about deprecated API use.
Did you turn on ESP32 core debug errors/warnings/info level to see if anything shows up in the debug output?

[kendrick90]

I'm also having this issue with a set up I am testing. Let me know if you want me to test any bins. Working in 14.4 but not 15.0.

My outputs pins are (33,17,5,2,4,12,14,15) with 300 pixels per output using WT32-ETH01 esp32

[JorinL]

Hey there,
I have the same problem on my 3 PWM strips.
When I cut the transitiontime it is gone - with transition it flashes when turning on before dimming up and when turning off while dimming down a flash and dimming further down.

I added a small video of the current situation.
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/f6009672-1853-451c-b2fd-f404a0fe5acc

[blazoncek]

@JorinL PWM is unrelated to digital flickering. Please open a new issue.

[Woutch]

Hi All,

I have the same problem in my Chrismas tree. This is a Quinled Dig uno v3 like this:
https://shop.allnetchina.cn/products/quinled-dig-uno-v3r7-digital-led-controller

It feeds 2 strings starting from the middle and string 1 is the upper one and 2 is the lower one.
Using the latest v14.4 I have zero problem, upgrading to v15 gives the first 20 leds a noicelike color and keep flikkering, even in solid mode, but faster when an effect is activated.

Output 1 is using gpio 1, and also tried 16, both same flickering.
Output 2 uses gpio 3, close to 0 problems.

Limiting the brightness seems to help, but this is brightness at 10% and problems still are like 50% more or less.

V14.4:

V15:

With effect:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/ef06e29d-556d-4a89-9d80-b0d910aa616f

Solid color:
https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/e6309d58-4a9c-48f4-b7d0-670ef472287c

If anyone needs more info, ask ;-)

Hope this helps,
Wouter