Wait, which one is the ground?
this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2025
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There is no single ground, as long as 12V is connected and one of the colours is connected to ground, that colour will light up.
WS2812B (and similar) are the superior type of LED strip: not only are the LEDs individually addressable instead of the whole strip being limited to a single color, you get the D instead of the greed.
So you're saying I could connect the D!? Would it tickle?
For general safety you should not touch exposed load bearing connections without proper protection. In your case it should be no problem, even if you turn it on and touch the D there should be no physical response. The resistance caused by your body is to strong and WS2812B is at max 5v.
Do you mind shorting out Greed? Would be greatly apperciated by the rest of the world.
Good. It is documented. Take a TPIC6595 and you can run it from about any controller.
What do I do with the "GREED" connector though?
Pull a Mangione?
ELI5 what the TPIC6595 does for you? This guide suggests you just need 3 transistors to go with your microcontroller.
That is another way. Having a shift register allows you to have quite a lot of strips connected to your chip, for the "cost" of three pins in total, more or less regardless of how many different strips you want to drive.
If you only want to drive one strip, though, a suitable transistor/MOSFET is a better choice, as you can adapt the schematics to your power requirements.
And make sure you connect the mosfet the right way so it doesn't "kinda" work and make you think your code is bad. Not that anyone has ever done that ever.
With a 30A mosfet under load, you'll soon notice, I'm sure.
Thankfully it was during my "let's see if my code works so far" phase as I learned LESs so I only had a dozen connected. I spent a looonnnggg time trying to figure out why my button was turning the LEDs on full brightness instead of fading on. No idea if I fried it, once I figured it out I replaced it with one of the other 50 I ordered (and haven't touched since)
Green is usually envy, but I suppose envy is the engine of greed. Social commentary in pinout labels. Whodathunkit?
Have fun with your RGB strips :D