The handle mounts firmly and nothing felt loose as I waved it about, somewhat violently at times, running back and forth through the frame. It would have been nice to be able to quickly flick on a bright light on the stick itself, rather than have dig out my iPhone or carry an actual flashlight around. Too many times during my tests did one of the little black screws come loose and fall to the ground, nearly lost to me forever. When you consider the notion that the Pixelstick will be primarily used in the dark, it would have been nice to see at least one or two white, flashlight LEDs embedded on the rear of the metal frame, switched on independently of the front LEDs.
It may be fine when it’s 80° outside, but a few of the nights we went out to test the Pixelstick were at or near freezing, making a battery change a very, very painful experience for my poor hands. This battery compartment needs a better solution, plain and simple. Powering each of the 200 LEDs are 8 AA’s in a holder that needs to be (at least mine did) forcefully squeezed into the hard cloth compartment mounted to the frame of the pixel stick. Thankfully, the Pixelstick doesn’t do anything proprietary, fancy, or backward for a power supply. This is a hard prediction to make, I know, but there’s probably enough strength and, maybe more importantly, just enough flex in the frame to allow leeway for when that dreaded drop or other accident inevitably happens. The aluminum frame of the Pixelstick is very sturdy, and I don’t foresee anyone having general build issues with it down the road. But nothing that makes me think the Pixelstick isn’t worth every penny of the $350 asking price. Fortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case.Įverything about the Pixelstick feels well done and quite thought-out. See our Distributors page for a complete list of distributors.The first thing that I always evaluate when I tackle a product like this-especially one with no real competition-is build quality.īeing first to market, the first model produced by Bitbanger Labs, I hoped this wouldn’t be a “yeah it’s great but it broke in one week” sort of product.
#Buy pixelstick drivers
NeoPixel Stick - 8 x 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Drivers ( 6:15)
#Buy pixelstick code
Including ready-to-go library & example code for the Arduino UNO/Duemilanove/Diecimila, Flora/Micro/Leonardo, Trinket/Gemma, Arduino Due & Arduino Mega/ADK (all versions) Our detailed NeoPixel Uberguide has everything you need to use NeoPixels in any shape and size. An 8MHz or faster processor is required.Ĭomes as a single stick with 8 individually addressable RGB LEDs assembled and tested.
#Buy pixelstick driver
Our wonderfully-written Neopixel library for Arduino supports these pixels! As it requires hand-tuned assembly it is only for AVR cores but others may have ported this chip driver code so please google around. It cannot be used with a Linux-based microcomputer or interpreted microcontroller such as the netduino or Basic Stamp. Since the protocol is very sensitive to timing, it requires a real-time microconroller such as an AVR, Arduino, PIC, mbed, etc.
There is a single data line with a very timing-specific protocol. The LEDs are 'chainable' by connecting the output of one stick into the input of another - see the photo above. Power the whole thing with 5VDC (4-7V works) and you're ready to rock. Each one has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external choke resistors are required making the design slim. Use only one microcontroller pin to control as many as you can chain together! Each LED is addressable as the driver chip is inside the LED. We crammed 8 of the tiny 5050 (5mm x 5mm) smart RGB LEDs onto a PCB with mounting holes and a chainable design.
Make your own little LED strip arrangement with this stick of NeoPixel LEDs.
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