Acting up

[joe shmo]

Hi. My cube all of a sudden stopped working correctly.it all of a sudden is shining bright orange colors in the first two rows in the front while the demo is still going in the background. Then all of a sudden the whole front of the cube won't work and only the backlights will work. I tried reseting. Didn't work. Then it will freeze up and only shine bright colors in the front and nothing is happening in the back anymore. Its like the whole cube froze on me. Then sometimes it will just light up in random spots different colors. It acts like its sick. Can you help please!!

[Werner M.]

Yes, we can.

Your cube is exhibiting behavior consistent with either:

 - a broken/bad connection in one or more of the LED strips;

 - a viz that is stressing the current bounds of the built-in current limiter circuit

If you load up any viz (including the original demo reel) from cubetube and it does not change this behavior, then you may want to try and make sure all LED strips are seated in all the way in their respective baseboard sockets. A good way to do this is remove all the acrylic panels, and while the cube is powered up and running a viz, start GENTLY wiggling each strip from side to side while pressing down (GENTLY and SLOWLY -- no force is necessary) to make sure they're seated in all the way.

-Werner

[joe shmo]

thank you for the response.  i tried what you said and took the half that was acting up and took each one out and put back carefully to make sure secure and turned on and the cube was still acting up. i tried cube doctor and everything and still no good. i don't know what to do because this just happened out of no where one day. I'm pretty upset about it

[Werner M.]

Hi, if you could take a picture of the cube it would allow for a better diagnostic of the problem; from the description you provided it could be one or more faulty strips.

For the sake of trying every possiblilty, have you also done the same procedure with the remaining strips, or only the ones that aren't working?

[Jerome Kekatos]

I have been having a similar problem with my cube since purchase - the first 2 rows on the front right hand side of the cube will not light, as well as the top 2 leds of the 3rd row strip. Not lighting for any vis... I have both re-seated and swapped out using the single provide spare strip.

I've wanted to take the cube to some businesses to demo but the defect has kept me from doing that...

Any hints on how to proceed?

[Werner M.]

Hi Jerome,

From your description and with the help of the picture you attached, I think it is safe to say that in your case, the problem lies on the 3rd LED strip from the right (the one with the top 2 LEDs not lit): the WS2812 controller chip that belongs to LED #7 (starting count from the bottom: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) is damaged and thus, data propagation stopped there. So neither LED #8 in that same strip, nor the other 2 strips to its right will light up.

Have you tried replacing just that 3rd strip with a spare one?

-Werner