I have an Arduino Uno connected to two IR transmitters and respective receivers. Basically, when one of the receivers detects a beam break, I have a strand of LEDs display a pattern. This all works in principle, but the problem is that when the IR transmitters and receivers are connected to the Arduino, the LEDs flicker with random colors.
The specific parts I’m using:
- Adafruit 36mm 12V LEDs (http://www.adafruit.com/products/683)
- 12V 5A power supply for the LEDs (https://www.adafruit.com/products/352)
- Two IR transmitters (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10732)
- Two IR receivers (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10266)
Here’s a video of exactly what’s happening. At first, the IR transmitters and receivers are disconnected and everything is fine, then I connect the IR receivers and the flickering begins at around 8 seconds. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REAp5rODYUs. The flickering will continue even when I disconnect the IR receiver, albeit at a reduced rate.
Here’s my wiring diagram:
In the above diagram, the Arduino is powered via USB (I tried with a 12V power supply too), and the LED strand is powered from an external 12V power supply (I couldn’t find a diagram for an LED strand).
If it matters, I should mention that I’m using the IRremote library to control the IR transmitters (http://www.righto.com/2010/03/detecting-ir-beam-break-with-arduino-ir.html) and the strandtest example from the Adafruit WS2801 LED library (https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-WS2801-Library) to test everything right now.
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