Help, Flora/Dotstar

General project help for Adafruit customers

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Mrocean717
 
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Help, Flora/Dotstar

Post by Mrocean717 »

I am trying to build a helmet with 144 Dotstar LEDs and have it be mobile.

I have my one-meter strip, the Flora, and the AAA power supply.

This is my first time dealing with this type of thing, what else would I need to make this functional and how would I wire it (in layman’s terms)

I have experience with wiring and soldering just not coding or building something from the ground up

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Help, Flora/Dotstar

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Take a look at some of the DotStar projects in the Learning System:

https://learn.adafruit.com/search?q=Dotstar

Those show the code you need, how to use it, and how DotStars are used in various projects.

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Mrocean717
 
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Re: Help, Flora/Dotstar

Post by Mrocean717 »

thank you. I was mainly asking if I can use the flora to power the Dotstar 144 because most of the recommended boards are out of stock

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: Help, Flora/Dotstar

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Mrocean717 wrote: Wed Jan 25, 2023 2:56 am I was mainly asking if I can use the flora to power the Dotstar 144
Strictly speaking, no microcontroller board can 'power' the DotStars. Each pixel uses up to 80mA, so a 144-pixel strip can use as much as 12A. In practice, we've found that most projects run happily on about 20mA per pixel, so the average realistic power will be around 3A. You'll need a power source capable of delivering that much current.

What the microcontroller does is generate signals that tell the DotStars what colors to display. The Flora can do that as well as any other microcontroller board.

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