Seeking advice on running 7 x WS2812b strips of 72 LEDs each over a distance

[ekendra]

I'm new to Arduino but have been coding for decades. My major shortcoming is knowing near nothing about electronics and circuitry. I'm really enjoying the learning process but, at present, my aspirations seem to outpace my ability. **broken link removed**

I'm prototyping a system that will illuminate each step of the staircase I'm building in our tiny house project. I want it to be controlled by two simple buttons that can be mashed as people ascend/descend the stairs; hence, one button would live at the top of the staircase and one at the bottom. I've already coded and tested that and it's working great .... AT CLOSE proximity to the breadboard/Arduino Uno that I'm using.

Here's the **broken link removed** if you're interested.

The problem comes when I'm running the buttons and LEDs from a distance. I've not yet hooked up all the strips since the first one went nutso when I hooked it up. I attached a 100uF capacitor across the positive and negative near the strip and that seemed to stabilize it ..... when the long button circuit is disconnected. I can substitute a testing button circuit on a breadboard just next to the Aduino and this works fine. When I pull this out and plug in the long actualbutton circuit, the LED strip goes unstable again.

It's got me a bit frustrated at the moment so any help would be greatly appreciated.

The first LED strip starts at about 1.5 metres from the arduino and power source (20 AWG for + and ground, 22 AWG for data line).
The first button is about 2.5 metres from the Arduino. (22 AWG)
The second button is about 8 metres from the Arduino. (22 AWG)

Each step would have a single WS2812b strip of 72 Individually programmable LEDs. There are 7 steps in the staircase so 7 x 72 = 504 LEDs in total.

I've got got 5V @10amps driving the circuit as you can see in the drawings below. (I know that more amperage would be ideal but we never plan to run this on full brightness. It's meant to be a bit dim/subtle and I've coded it to not go over 50% brightness.)

I've gone to a bit of trouble to make a schmatic and Fritzing breadboard to clearly communicate my currently dysfunctional idea.
(Better quality images: **broken link removed** | **broken link removed**).


**broken link removed**

And here's an example of what the end result would look like. I used one strip at a close distance for this image.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

The arduino (or any logic IC / MCU) inputs are high impedance and direct wire connections act like antennas, picking up electrical noise from everything in the area.

The simple way around that is to make the input low impedance - use fairly low value pullup or pulldown resistors directly at the input, eg. 1K, with the button to the opposite polarity from the resistor.

Better still, use a voltage divider at the input, eg. 1k5 & 1K for a 12V supply to the buttons and 5V logic.

For maximum possible interference protection, use a zener as well - eg. for 12V a 3.3V or 4.7V would be suitable, with a divider set up to give the appropriate logic voltage from the 12V switch feed, as dropped by the zener and resistor divider.

It's a good idea to also add a limiting resistor between the output of whatever voltage divider you use and the logic or MCU input pin, to avoid damaging currents if the logic supply fails or voltage spikes cause higher than the intended voltage on the remote switch wiring.