Kevin. Great looking map!

Sorry to say it's gonna be either a ground or signal wire going to you LEDs that is making an intermittent connection.

Be especially concerned that the LED strip and RPI share the same ground plane. They must have their grounds connected. 

You may even try using different ports on your breadboard too. These are notorious for intermittent connections.

Let us know. - Mark

I'm also having something similar go on here. I can turn the map on and off, but the LEDs continue to flash different colors. Also, I realize this is a silly question but is each light considered to be pin# 0, 1, 2, 3, etc from the start of the LED strand? If so, I'm not seeing the lights coloring correctly. I've taught myself a lot on this project so far, but this seems to be the point of confusion for me. 

- Nic

Hi, Sorry for the issue. But this is a common occurrence. It is almost always due to the ground plane not being connected between the LED's and the RPI. It's also possible that the signal wire coming off the Level Converter chip is in a bad (intermittent) hole on the breadboard. So it might be worth trying a different hole.

If you would like to take a picture of the breadboard and RPI wiring and post it, we can look and see if we can tell you where their might be an issue. - Mark

Hey Mark! The more I've read the more it seems to be common 🙁 Here is a picture of my wiring setup:

Looks like you have everything wired properly. My suggestion would be to reflow some of the solder connections on the proto-board. I'd first try the ground wires, then the signal wire for the Level converter. 

You can try wiggling, thumping the connections to see if you can force the intermittent behavior to occur. That may help isolate where to re-solder.

Finally, you may find you have luck by using a different jumper wire. Its possible to have a crimp causing issues, although not a common. 

I've had luck using another jumper and using it as a test wire where I just leave the suspect wire in place, and put the test jumper across the wire that's in place (in parallel to the suspect wire) and see if that clears up the issue. If it does, then you know which wire/solder joint to concentrate on.

Let us know what you find. - Mark

So I've discovered that when I move the green data wire on the lights is when things start to glitch out a bit (the lights also haven't been displaying correct info when constant either). When I unplug the green wire the lights remain constant with no flashing - seems to be the issue? 

Additionally, I am new to circuits here, but I am able to track the flow of the majority of the wires here aside from this one. There's not another wire lined up on line 33 except for the green. Where is the data flowing from to get to the lights? 

The green wire in your pictures is connected to the signal side of your LED string on one end and to the output of the Level converter on the other. The signal that drives the LED's is generated on GPIO 18, which is your grey wire which is then connected to the input of the Level converter. The job of the level converter is to take the 3.3v output from the RPI and convert it to 5v that the LED string needs to operate properly. 

So if you wiggle the green wire and its flickering, then you have isolated the area of concern. Try a different jumper, or solder the wire directly to the LED string if necessary to make a very solid consistent connection.

As far as the wrong colors, that won't have anything to do with the wiring. You had asked if Pin 0 is the first LED and the answer is Yes. When you populate the airports in the airport editor you will see it starts at 0 and goes up from there. So be sure the proper airport is in the appropriate box for the LED you need.

Also, in the Sectional Map Settings under the Settings Editor there is a setting called 'RGB or GRB LEDs Used'. Since your using the WS2811 string of LED's you must be sure to select the 'GRB' (Green, Red, Blue) option. Otherwise the colors will be wrong.

Let us know what happens next. - Mark

Mark,

I just redid the solders on the wire from the GPIO 18 as well as the green signal wire. I am now rid of the flickering, but the colors still will not line up... I've tried to change the GRB and RGB light settings and neither display the correct color. When it's on RGB all the VFR airports are pinkish-red. When it's GRB all the VFR airports are blue. I appreciate the help 🤣 

Glad you got the flickering handled. Now, download the airports file and logfile from the 'Map Utilities' dropdown and attach here so we can look at them. Maybe that will help determine why the colors don't line up. - Mark

Here is the log file. Trying to attach the airport list