3 ms·

If you came here hoping for good resources on how to set up and control LED strips, angry that the article linked was bad and devoid of any good details, here a

If you came here hoping for good resources on how to set up and control LED strips, angry that the article linked was bad and devoid of any good details, here are some useful resources. #1: AdaFruit loves you and has a guide: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide #2: Andreas Speiss has a phenomenal youtube channel that offers a lot of solid tips and tricks for new makers looking to avoid common pitfalls: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIl5nDjfkjY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIl5nDjfkjY #3: GreatScott! (another great youtuber) has a really fun article on what I'd label a very "intermediate" LED project to get a sense of how to put everything together to make a unique object that is not simply a matrix and a lot of software: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXfMg8y1Fs4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXfMg8y1Fs4 Good luck, and one last tip: remember to be careful that your microcontroller may be fried by the voltage your LED strips needs. It may seem that there is an obvious solution to that which is, "Just use 2 power supplies" but with 3-wire LED strips group loops can exist and ruin your ability to control the strip. Don't despair, search for "buck converter board" and then look up how to tune it. You'll get a system efficient enough that you can drop 12v to 3.3v and it won't drain your battery or overhead your enclosure. Linear regulators are not your friend, they're usually cheaper specialist tools for folks who care about radios.

conk 6y ago
As for voltage difference between controller and lights, you can sacrifice the first led and power it at 3.3v and power the remaining ones from a second power supply. The first led will be a little dimmer than he rest but this setup has been very stable in my tests.
- KirinDave 6y ago
  At that point I'd just grab a heavy resistor of the appropriate value and wire the controller down rather than accept a dead pixel in my line. Usually this is a problem for 12V LED lines with 3V3 microcontroller like the ESP32.
- andruby 6y ago
  How does that work? Do I understand correctly that you connect the first led to a esp32 (+3V, onewire, GND) and then connect +12V and GND to the second led? I wonder why it wouldn’t work if you connect +12V on the first led?
  - avianlyric 6y ago
    The LEDs in the article are WS2812B LEDs that operate at 5v rather than 12v. 5v is a slightly more "normal" LED voltage, 12v strips are usually going little tricks like have 3 or LEDs in series and using that to get the required 12v drop. With the WS2812B you're issue is that they operate on 5v logic for communications. 3v logic from a chip can _just about_ communicate with 5v devices. But you can't send the signal very far before the voltage drop stops communication. The cheat here is to use a single WS2812B LED as logic voltage converter. You put a resistor in line so it's operating at ~4v, give it a 3v logic signal it can understand, and it'll then talk down stream using ~4v logic, which you can then pump into normal 5v LEDs. You can find detail of this little trick on hackaday[1]. But it's specific to WS2812B type LEDs that are really microcontrollers that happen to also put out light, rather than traditional dumb LEDs that have no smarts. [1] https://hackaday.com/2017/01/20/cheating-at-5v-ws2812-control-to-use-a-3-3v-data-line/ https://hackaday.com/2017/01/20/cheating-at-5v-ws2812-contro...
    - SK6812away 6y ago
      IME, you can use 3.3V logic with 5V WS2812B/SK6812 strips, no trouble. Each LED reforms the signal before sending it to the next LED in the chain, so voltage dropping over distance shouldn't a huge issue for the logic line unless the strip is very far away from the controller. And the datasheet almost agrees with my experience; the "high" voltage threshold is listed as 0.7×VDD, and 0.7×5=3.5V. That's a bit over 3.3V, but I haven't had any issues across several projects. Maybe it's because many USB supplies provide a little over 5V to account for droop? Maybe the datasheet is slightly pessimistic? Maybe 0.7 really means 2/3? Whatever the reason, it simplifies the wiring for small displays. Here's my favorite reference for the single-wire protocol that these LEDs use, since everyone seems to be chiming in with one: https://wp.josh.com/2014/05/13/ws2812-neopixels-are-not-so-finicky-once-you-get-to-know-them/ https://wp.josh.com/2014/05/13/ws2812-neopixels-are-not-so-f...

conk 6y ago

As for voltage difference between controller and lights, you can sacrifice the first led and power it at 3.3v and power the remaining ones from a second power supply. The first led will be a little dimmer than he rest but this setup has been very stable in my tests.

KirinDave 6y ago
At that point I'd just grab a heavy resistor of the appropriate value and wire the controller down rather than accept a dead pixel in my line. Usually this is a problem for 12V LED lines with 3V3 microcontroller like the ESP32.
andruby 6y ago
How does that work? Do I understand correctly that you connect the first led to a esp32 (+3V, onewire, GND) and then connect +12V and GND to the second led? I wonder why it wouldn’t work if you connect +12V on the first led?
- avianlyric 6y ago
  The LEDs in the article are WS2812B LEDs that operate at 5v rather than 12v. 5v is a slightly more "normal" LED voltage, 12v strips are usually going little tricks like have 3 or LEDs in series and using that to get the required 12v drop. With the WS2812B you're issue is that they operate on 5v logic for communications. 3v logic from a chip can _just about_ communicate with 5v devices. But you can't send the signal very far before the voltage drop stops communication. The cheat here is to use a single WS2812B LED as logic voltage converter. You put a resistor in line so it's operating at ~4v, give it a 3v logic signal it can understand, and it'll then talk down stream using ~4v logic, which you can then pump into normal 5v LEDs. You can find detail of this little trick on hackaday[1]. But it's specific to WS2812B type LEDs that are really microcontrollers that happen to also put out light, rather than traditional dumb LEDs that have no smarts. [1] https://hackaday.com/2017/01/20/cheating-at-5v-ws2812-control-to-use-a-3-3v-data-line/ https://hackaday.com/2017/01/20/cheating-at-5v-ws2812-contro...
  - SK6812away 6y ago
    IME, you can use 3.3V logic with 5V WS2812B/SK6812 strips, no trouble. Each LED reforms the signal before sending it to the next LED in the chain, so voltage dropping over distance shouldn't a huge issue for the logic line unless the strip is very far away from the controller. And the datasheet almost agrees with my experience; the "high" voltage threshold is listed as 0.7×VDD, and 0.7×5=3.5V. That's a bit over 3.3V, but I haven't had any issues across several projects. Maybe it's because many USB supplies provide a little over 5V to account for droop? Maybe the datasheet is slightly pessimistic? Maybe 0.7 really means 2/3? Whatever the reason, it simplifies the wiring for small displays. Here's my favorite reference for the single-wire protocol that these LEDs use, since everyone seems to be chiming in with one: https://wp.josh.com/2014/05/13/ws2812-neopixels-are-not-so-finicky-once-you-get-to-know-them/ https://wp.josh.com/2014/05/13/ws2812-neopixels-are-not-so-f...