Control Neopixel brightness with a potentiometer

[bridgier]

I'd like to control the brightness of a neopixel ring with a potentiometer, but all of the examples of this that I can find use analogRead() on a microcontroller to map the potentiometer value to the pixel brightness.

I'd rather cut the analogRead() out of the picture, and just wire the potentiometer inline with the voltage in on the neopixel ring - will this work, or do I risk damaging my ring?

Thanks -

[michaelmeissner]

That won't work, since neopixels are a digital protocol. When you do do a show(), it sends a series of pulses down the wire, apart from headers, etc. it sends down 3 bytes per led giving the color values from 0..255, and the ws2812 chip then does an internal PWM on each of the 3 leds to get the appropriate power level. In addition, neopixels have a fairly narrow voltage bandwidth (3.5 to 5v).