Advanced Pixel guide

This is the 3rd Wiki in the series, If you have not read the other two please start with the basic guide.

• Pixels a beginners guide

  Intermediate pixel guide

I have my lights and controller now what?

 So you have your lights, controller, and power supply, lets see how all these work together. First off inspect everything as it comes in, make sure nothing is visibly damaged. Once again as stated over and over in this community - You are working with electricity that has the potential to harm or even kill use electric safety for all aspects of this project for your own safety as well as your viewers 

Lets start by connecting the lights to the controller (work backwards applying power at the end makes sure if you accidentally touch something nothing gets fried).

Dumb RGB - In these you will find that you have 4 wires (unless your using rgbw which has a fifth wire for white) Note your color of wires may differ though they are the same functions.

Red = + voltage

Blue = ground attached to all the blue elements

Green = ground attached to all the green elements

Black = ground attached to all the red elements

Your board should have labels on the outputs stating color order. Make sure the + voltage is applied to the correct wire, diodes generally limit current to one direction applying the + voltage to one of the grounds will make it so none of the lights will light. If you haven't noticed there is no direction here as far as which way the string goes, in dumb rgb it doesn't matter you can feed the string from either side. Another note there is a limit as to how many strings you can hook together before the voltage drops, unlike rgb pixels we cannot just inject more power as this will overpower the grounds from the board and will make the entire string series light wrong. Instead we use a power amplifier, [1] . These are available inexpensively around the net.

 RGB Pixel Pixels are either 4 wire or 3 wire, generally the industry is moving towards 3 wire. Note your color of wires may differ though they are the same functions.

Red = + voltage

Green = data

White/black = ground

Blue = clock (only on 4 wire pixels)

Once again your board should be labeled with output number and pin lay out. Triple check that the wiring to the board is correct. In RGB pixels direction does matter, there should be some notation on direction, on strips big arrows on the strip point the direction of data flow, on other types of pixels the arrow may be on a small board inside each light. If you have the lights hooked up backwards they will not work.

  Computer to controller board There is a myriad of ways that the boards hook up to computers, check with your board to see how it is to be hooked up, Note renard and dmx input may use the rj45 (ethernet) jack but cannot be hooked up to the ethernet port on the computer, a dongle from the usb port to convert it to rj45 is needed. 

 Hooking up the controller to the power supply Boards vary from one to another, read up on your specific board as to where power is applied to. All boards have a power input ensure that the + is hooked up to the power supply's V+ output and the - or ground is hooked up to the power supplies V- IMPORTANT on the power supply there will be an ac input that will be labeled something like L,N,and a ground (could be a inverted tree looking symbol) these are for the ac side and should not be connected to the board. 

 Hooking up the power supply to ac As stated above a 3 wire plug is needed generally in ac circuits black/brown is load or line this wire should be hooked up to the L, white is neutral this wire should be hooked up to the N terminal, and green or yellow/green striped is ground, this should be hooked up to the ground terminal. 

Powering it up. If you have everything connected correctly when you plug in the power supply you should have the following happen, lights on the controller should come on and some blinking (read your boards documentation as far as what lights on the controller board should be working) If your rgb lights are lit at this point something is wrong, see troubleshooting below to pinpoint what is happening and corrections.

You now can follow your boards documentation as to how to set the board up correctly to control the lights.