Surprise soldering and Winter Storms

Today I planned to start working on building the network systems required for the project. I was hoping to get a pi running the wireless interface ad hoc while simultaneously running the Ethernet interface as part of the main network. This would allow me to have lower latency communication on the nodes and I could separate the control panel from the business logic, as it were.

However; one of my node's panels lost light on 6 LEDs so I have broken that out of the clay and am soaking it overnight to see if I can get it repaired tomorrow. In the meantime, however I will need another panel. So I am going to solder a couple little sets of WS2812B chips into a new panel and get back on track (hopefully). My soldering iron is trash tier, just a $20 piece of shit that came with some extra tips and a stand to hold it... so it's a lot better than what I had but it has no real temperature control, there's a potentiometer that does kind of change the heat but there's no indication of how hot it is or anything like that. It does... a job. It's not great but hey, I'm not super great at soldering either.

So I'm gonna get on that now and hopefully be back on track soon.

Alright, next day.

So today I have a new panel going screwy. I'm wondering if it is the clay as I have run a panel of these for 4 years nonstop now and it's still fine. It's acting like there's some kind of noise on the data line or maybe one of the registers on one of the LEDs is failing? I have the one that blew yesterday cleaned up and drying now, I will test it tomorrow. I want to give it the best chance to fully dry out, luckily it's cold as Hel and the heat is running overtime so the air is quite dry so hopefully it goes well.

I lost power last night which kinda made me paranoid to fall asleep because I need to enact the lizard protection plan if the power goes out in winter. Might have it go out again tonight, got a storm rolling in. The point is I am tired.

Yeah, looks like that one's on it's way out too. Testing doesn't show much promise for this one being alright. The question is why... is it because the WS2812s I this time around are crappier? Hard to say. I will have to look through and find which ones I bought from who and find an overlap if there is one.

If not I guess I will sit here wishing for better electronics debugging tech than LEDs and multi-meters. Some day...

Anyway it's Sunday and I got a storm to prepare for.

Cheers.

Quick Edit;

The dead buggers are these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B081BBF4R3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1
and these https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B078YKQKX3/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

For future reference I should probably stick with DIYMall, GeekStory and ALITOVE stores for my WS2812b and actually I think my ws2811s are from ALITOVE too.

Also, Note to self; Get more ESP8266s for this project. Also more WS281X modules and individual pieces. More than I expect to need in case they go bang fizzle and let out the magic smoke. This is R&D phase 2 now, shit tends to start breaking now.