LED data corruption with RMT driver

[jasondostal]

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.

[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.

[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

[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?