Hey everyone… I’m new to Arduino and coding… so a beginner’s question: I purchased a strand of 50 WS2811 LED’s and an Arduino Uno, and for now all I want to do is a simple project of being able to control the color of the LED’s. Eventually I want to connect another strand of 50 and use them for my Christmas tree next year (well, 2018…). I figure this can be a sort-of “initiation” into the Arduino world.
So if anyone has links to any good articles or tutorials I’m all ears (eyes). I already have a breadboard and wires. Oh, and I also have a 12V power supply.
So - for your next project (you’ll have lots before Christmas!) think about getting 5V LED strips rather than 12V, that way you can drive both your arduino and the LEDs off of the same power supply. But no big deal for now. Those particular 12V lights should work fine with a 5V data signal. At least they did for me for MY first LED project
Once you have the mechanics and connections down and have the Arduino IDE installed and running, included in the IDE are a ton of examples - starting with simply blinking the on board LED and then getting more and more complicated. Adafruit also has tons of tutorials for projects on the “learn” section of their site.
You’ve got the right idea of starting off simple and small. My first project was turning about 7 pixels red last thanksgiving, and I brought a 1000 pixel jacket to burning man last summer!
As you run into questions create a new post and put the code you’re working with on http://gist.github.com and share a link to the code in your post.
If you power your LED strip with your 12 supply and your UNO via USB make sure you also have a wire connecting ground on the strip to ground on the UNO. Everything needs to be connected with a common ground.
Thanks for the replies. I did manage to install the FastLED libraries, and I am also looking around for sample code. I see that my Arduino Uno runs on 7-12V, but I assume I should get a separate power supply for both the lights and the Arduino? This will be a stand-alone project so I don’t think I’d power it by USB.
@Mike_Katchmar Didn’t see your post… I will probably use 2 different power supplies, the strand I have has 50 LED’s, and I will eventually connect one more, so I’d rather have the dedicated 12V for the lights.
@Shooter_FPV_Shooter My personal advice would be: Don’t worry too much about the power situation just yet. You can start fretting about that when you have tons and tons of lights As long as you’re not blasting all of your LEDs at full brightness and white all the time, they actually draw way way less than the spec 60ma/led. You’re on the right track - play around with the sample FastLED code and have fun. The nitty gritty of project design can come much later
@chad_steinglass Thanks Chad. My thing now is how I get it all connected, and learning the code. Can’t seem to find any tutorials yet on how to actually connect it to the Arduino and all that. I have a spare breadboard and wires, so I just need to figure out the connections.
