Neopixels & regulators

[electroken]

We'll be giving this PCB a try this year. It's 2.5" X 2.5", has its own 5V, 3A buck regulator and also provides a mounting point and power for the Arduino Micro. The only control system connections are 2 digital inputs from our MXP board to select animation patterns.

Our testing has shown that this should be able to drive 3 meters of Neopixels all day, as long as we aren't blasting full-brightness white the whole time.

[sparkytwd]

Super important whatever regulator you use, if you have many LEDs, you'll need filter caps. WS281x drivers are super sensitive to overvoltage and the briefest transient spike will ruin your strip. In 2014 we had a 5x120 LED display on our robot, and over the course of 3 competitions over 5 strips worth of LEDs.

If you go through my history you can find a board designed to power several thousand LEDs, though this year we decided to go with 16/2 scan panels, which are cheaper.

[electroken]

Here's the real deal, assembled and tested.

[wmahany]

Hi *electroken*
I am the electrical mentor for 871.
What IC are you using for the buck DC-DC?

TIA

[electroken]

Originally Posted by wmahany

Hi *electroken*
I am the electrical mentor for 871.
What IC are you using for the buck DC-DC?

TIA

The board in the photo is using a Texas Instruments TPS5420. That IC is good for 2A continuous, 3A peak.

[juchong]

The easiest (and for veteran teams, cheapest) way to get NeoPixels on your robot is to use an old regulator to power your LEDs and use the 5V bus from the RoboRIO to power your microcontroller.

Last year the Platypi used a Teensy and the i2c library to change the color of the LEDs based upon alliance color and game mode.

Video of the robot in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_c...&v=HAiH8s1UKus