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Switching from 6 to 3 apa106 leds - issues

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Pallasz01

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Hi Everyone!

I have reached a point of semi-desperation with a project on which I am working for over a year now. There is one issue I doesn't seem to be able to fix.

I have a nixie clock pcb which drives 6 apa106 rgb leds. I am trying to wire it up to be able to turn off three of these leds (Leds 1,2,3) and to switch from the remaining three (Leds 4,5,6) to another three, "external" apa106 leds (Leds 7,8,9). Essentially what I'd like to achieve is the following:

Led 1 - turn off
Led 2 - turn off
Led 3 - turn off
Led 4 - switch to Led 7
Led 5 - switch to Led 8
Led 6 - switch to Led 9

I have two 3pdt (9 pin) switches. What I tried:

1. Wiring the 5v pin of Leds 1,2,3 to one of the switches and using it to turn them off.

Wiring the pcb's 5v pad to the other 3pdt switch, wiring DIN and GND in parallel of Leds 4,5,6 and Leds 7,8,9 to the pcb, then using the 3pdt switch to switch the 5v from Leds 4,5,6 to Leds 7,8,9

In this scenario I got uncontrollable flickering on almost all leds.

2. Wiring the DIN pins of Leds 1,2,3 to the first 3pdt switch to turn off the data input.

Wiring the GND and 5v pins of Leds 4,5,6 and Leds 7,8,9 in parallel to the pcb and then using the second 3pdt switch to switch the data signal coming from the pcb from Leds 4,5,6 to Leds 7,8,9 or vice versa.

In this scenario either some of the leds with interrupted data input remain stuck on the last color displayed or they turn on randomly and display random colors.




I am not really familiar with smart leds or electronics in general; I suspect there is something I am seriously overlooking here, but I do hope someone can help solving this.

Thank you very-very much, any help is greatly appreciated!
 
Nvm, solved it by wiring pins vcc and DIN in parallel for Leds 1,2,3 and 4,5,6 amd then switching these to Leds 7,8,9. No flickering, no stuck colors.
 
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