SK6812 RGBW- White LED channel won't turn on

[BrickSolid28]

What happened?

Using a DIg Octa board. After updating to WLED 15.0 the white LEDs in a SK6812 RGBW strip won't turn on. All the other LED channels work correctly but the white LEDs won't turn on. They were working correctly on 14.2.

To Reproduce Bug

Tried updating from 14.2 as well as doing multiple clean installs. Tried using the bin file from multiple sources. White LED's won't turn on.

Expected Behavior

White LED's to turn on when the white channel slider that's under the color pallet is adjusted.

Install Method

Binary from WLED.me

What version of WLED?

15.0

Which microcontroller/board are you seeing the problem on?

ESP32

Relevant log/trace output

No response

Anything else?

No response

Code of Conduct

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

[BrickSolid28]

I can get white using a combination of RGB but no light is coming from the actual white LED's. I've tried all of the options under "Auto-calculate W channel from RGB:" in the settings menu but still nothing comes from the actual white LED's.

[ijspear]

I believe I am experiencing this behavior as well. I found that when adding less than 5 channels on my Octa everything works as expected (BRG, Swap W & G). As soon as I add the 6th or more channel(s) on their respective GPIO (6, 12, 13) I lose the blue light all my channels and when blue is targeted as the color, all strips just turn off. As soon as I delete that channel normal behavior resumes. v15.0

[mtkraai]

I am also having this issue. My sk6812 strip is on output 7 of 8 (all 8 are used) on my Dig-Octa board. Same as the other reporters, RGB outputs work fine, just no output on the white channel. Color order on this strip is GRB, swap: None.

All the other strips in my setup are 3 channels each.

[ijspear]

@mtkraai if you delete a few of the other channels so your total channel count is 5 or less does your white come back?

[trullock]

As mentioned in the referenced issue above, try turning the auto current limit setting on/off. Dont blow your PSU up though!

[blazoncek]

For anyone having issues with mixed LED types and multiple outputs (>5) please try the following:

• reorder your outputs so that 1st uses SK6812 (or WS2805), i.e. RGBW strip
• reduce the number of outputs to 5 or less
• increase LED count on one of the outputs to more than 300 (even if actual LEDs are fewer)

Report back with detailed findings.

[BrickSolid28]

Blazoncek- Thanks for the tips! I had gone back to 14.2 and had no issues. I’ve reinstalled 15.0 and ran into the same issues with the white channel. I removed LED outputs until I had less than 5 and the white channel works again! I still have the brightness limiter turned on (30,000 ma), all of my strips are RGBW, and have multiple outputs that are under 300 lights but it still worked. Increasing the number of output channels to 6 made the white channel stop working again. Turning the current limiter on/off had no positive effects. There must be some kind of bug with the number of channels being used and the white channel output.

[blazoncek]

@BrickSolid28 it is not a "bug" with number of channels. Please see #4380 for additional info.

[BrickSolid28]

@blazoncek It’s not practical in my set up to increase all of the channel outputs to be over 300 lights but I can increase the last channel. Increasing just the last led channel to be over 300 lights made ALL of the channels work again. Even when over 5 led outputs are used.

[mtkraai]

@ijspear @blazoncek Like everyone else (here and #4380), if I increase a channel to 300+ length, it works as expected. Even a channel unrelated to the problem. Also, if I only have 5 channels, the RGBW channel works correctly.

[blazoncek]

I am closing this issue as a duplicate of #4380. Please continue discussion and other reports there.
Anyone interested in testing newer version of NPB see link I posted there.