Help with sk6812

I saw that i could use and external power supply to power the leds and also another device suck as a pi with one power source. “It is convenient that the power wires are duplicated on the input side because you can connect the auxiliary power wires to your 5 V power supply and then the power will be available on the data input connector and can be used to power the microcontroller that is controlling the LED strip. This means you can power the microcontroller and LED strip from a single supply without having to make branching power connections.”

I was wondering if i could get a wiring diagram. Wasnt sure if i could run the power source, 5v to the aux power, cut off the jst connector and attatch the positive and negative to a usb to supply power to the pi, and connect the data line to the gpio pin. The leds and pi theoretically would be both grounded together so i shouldnt need to use a ground gpio pin or would i have to do that as well? That is, if what i said above is what you would do. Just trying to avoid having to plug two thi gs in seeing the leds and pi both use 5v

Thanks,

DenDovne

Hello, DenDovne.

Yes, you can power your LED strip(s) and Raspberry Pi from the same power supply, as long as it is powerful enough to handle the combined current draw. We do not have a wiring diagram showing how to connect it (since there is not one specific way), but the method you described sounds fine.

As you mentioned, they would already be sharing a ground connection, so you would just need to supply the data signal to the LED strip’s green wire. However, the minimum logic high threshold for the SK6812 data line is 3.4V, so I recommend using a level-shifter since the Raspberry Pi uses 3.3V. In our tests, we were able to control them with 3.3V signals using very short jumper wires to make the connections, but using the strip out of spec like this could lead to unexpected problems.

If you are still unsure about the connections, you can post a proposed wiring diagram, and I would be happy to give it a look and see if I notice anything concerning.

Brandon