Quote:
Originally Posted by Belovan
We have an Arduino Uno. Upon closer examination of the LED strip, both of the two black wires are connected to the ground on the strip, the thicker of the two red wires is to 5V. The thinner red wire is to Data In, and the white wire is connected to clock. Where would the strip get 5V from on the robot?
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You can find one 5V header
here on the Digital Sidecar (+5V is marked in green, Ground is marked in Red below it.) However,
be careful doing this. You cannot exceed a 4 Amps max with everything connected to the DIOs on the Sidecar,
doing so might result in permanent damage to your sidecar. http://tinyurl.com/bpbbwh4
As far as connecting the DI and CL pins to your arduino, Connect the Clock wire to digital Pin 3 and Connect the Green Data wire to digital Pin 2. Since you are using the LPD8806's, the original linked library does not support this type. Adafruit, on the other hand, has a great tutorial on the code and a link to their library which fully supports the LPD8806's.
http://learn.adafruit.com/digital-led-strip/code
Quote:
Originally Posted by jbsmithtx
What about lights that use 12v inputs? We supply the ground, and then each of the colors has an appropriate 12v lead. Would we have to use bulky motor controllers? Someone tell me there is a simpler solution. I realize we can develop a lot of colors and effects because of that, but it might not be the nicest thing to use.. Even then, how would a motor controller work? The same ground for all three? might be a little sketch and destroy some stuff...
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Assuming your LEDs look like
this , there is actually one +12 Volt input and 3 Grounds (labeled 'R' 'G' and 'B'). Connecting +12 volts to the +12 volt labeled on the PCB, and connecting one of the grounds to ground will result in that color being displayed. I am not sure exactly how one would power these LEDs without a custom circuit to do so. Adafruit again has a great tutorial on this.
http://learn.adafruit.com/rgb-led-strips/overview