Holiday Neopixel Strip
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- bcochran1
- Posts: 497
- Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:46 pm
Holiday Neopixel Strip
I am enjoying this 2-meter Neopixel strip -- it is product number 1138.
The strip needs to be powered by a 5v, 10a power supply. I purchased one from Adafruit and followed the wiring instructions given in the Uberguide for Neopixels. The microcontroller part is an Atmega644A which is set up as a Sanguino clone. It is on the breadboard. It has the Optiboot loader on it, and for this photo, the Adafruit-supplied "strandtest" sketch is running.
I will post a detail of the power supply tomorrow. I know it is hard to see with all that blue tape. I get very nervous about short circuits.
One high-impact lesson I learned while setting this up: don't try to power the microcontroller and breadboard from the computer. I think I miswired something; I am not sure exactly what I did wrong, but the moment I plugged the USB cable from the Mac to the programmer on the breadboard, with the 5v 10A power supply also connected to the NeoPixels and supplying live power to them, the Mac crashed instantly and displayed this very ugly black-and-white text message. Then the Mac restarted itself, and everything seems okay, thankfully. Thank you, Apple, for building the Mac tough and strong! I am still sweating in fear from that one.
Now what I do is -- if I use the 5v 10A supply brick, I power the microcontroller from a powered USB hub which is not connected to a host computer. The entire purpose of the hub is to supply power to the breadboard. When I want to upload a sketch, I totally disconnect the 5v 10A power supply, and the neopixel data and ground connections, and then I upload the sketch normally, through the programmer. (It is a "USB BUB" built by Modern Device.)
Bob
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- adafruit_support_bill
- Posts: 88086
- Joined: Sat Feb 07, 2009 10:11 am
Re: Holiday Neopixel Strip
Nice work bob! Thanks for posting.
- bcochran1
- Posts: 497
- Joined: Mon Jan 21, 2013 10:46 pm
Re: Holiday Neopixel Strip
Thank you!
Unfortunately the tree fell down late last night. There was quite a mess. We need to re-decorate it again.
Bob
Please be positive and constructive with your questions and comments.