01.5 Arduino Wiring Setup - frc2052/2052-LED-Training GitHub Wiki
In previous years Knightkrawler used Arduino development boards. Recently, KnightKrawler switched over to using ESP-WROOM-32 Development Boards. You can find the wiring guide for the ESP-WROOM-32 here.
The complete wiring setup looks like this.
Start with a little soldering and crimping. Take a LED connector and two breadboard jumper wires. Check to ensure you have the correct LED Connector for attaching to your LED strip or panel. WS2812B LED strips and panels are directional. You will see an arrow or a DIN/DOUT label to indicate the input direction. You need to identify the correct LED connector type to connect to the input side of your LEDs. For this LED connector Red = 5v Power, White = Ground and Green = Signal. Take two jumper wires and cut and strip one end, keep the male pin end of the jumper wire.
One jumper will be soldered to the signal wire on the LED connector. The other jumper will be combined with the ground wire on the LED connector. Crimp and/or solder spade connectors to the 5v Power. Crimp and/or solder the two ground wires to another spade connector. In this photo, a white jumper wire is connected to the white ground wire and a gray jumper wire is connected to the green signal wire. The colors of the jumper wires do not matter but it is best to choose jumper colors that avoid confusion between signal and ground.
KnightKraweler uses two different power sources for the arduino and the LED power. Technically, a single 5v Power source could be used. However, we have elected to use the block power converter with 3 amp output to maximize the amount of power that can be used by the LED strips. More amps allow for greater brightness. Isolating the power sources also ensures that the Arduino will not "brown out" and reset if the LEDs pull too much power. We elected to use a USB port converter to power the Arduino for convenience. Using this approach, students can quickly connect the Arduino to a laptop to upload a program and test. Then, by disconnecting the USB cable from the laptop and plugging into the USB power port, the Arduino becomes powered off the robot battery.
To create the power system, connect the USB power socket and the 12v/5v power converter to a wire that will connect to a robot battery. The battery connection is not shown here. Not all teams use the same battery connector for their 12v battery. Add spade connectors to the output side of the 12V/5v block converter.
To complete the setup:
- Connect the spade connectors on the block converter and the USB connector created earlier
- Connect the LED strip/panel to the LED connector
- Connect the Arduino to the USB plug using a USB cable
- Connect the jumper wires on the USB connector to the Arduino. Ground jumper to a ground pin on the Arduino and Signal jumper to any programmable pin, in this case, the Signal jumper wire is connected to pin 3 on the Arduino
NOTE 1: The ground jumper wire is called a "common ground" wire. This is necessary because while programming and testing, the Arduino will be powered by the laptop power and the LEDs will be powered from the robot battery. With two different power sources, a common ground wire is needed to complete the signal circuit. The common ground wire is redundant when everything is running on a robot battery power.
NOTE 2: Some LED strips and panels have additional power wires (as shown in the photos above). Cover or cap these wire ends to avoid short circuits.
With everything wired, we can now move on to programming. Disconnect The Arduino from the USB power socket and connect to the laptop.