Power up and Test the connected LED Strip

Plug in the power supply in the socket. When you plugging in the strip will light up for about a second or two. It's possible to stay shining LEDs after these seconds. Take your phone and connect it to the Raspberry. Go to settings -> List all programs and start LED_Strip_test.py

#980
17 Mar 2019
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TL.DR

OK, we have LED Strip, power adapter and plug-in connector. Let's connect them.

Be careful! Don't plug the adapter in the socket before you have connected everything else!

How and what to connect?

Let's look at the cables of the LED Strip. Sometimes they came pre-soldered to some kind of connector. If this is your case you just need to put one of your jumper cables from Module One. Othewise you'll have to strip enough the cables to put them in the plug-in connector termnals.
Connect the "5V" wire to the "+" terminal of plug-in connector.
Split the "GND" in two. Connect the first wire to the "-" terminal of plug-in connector, and second one to one of the GND pins of your Raspberry. It's very important, GND of strip,GND of connector and GND of Raspberry, to be connected.

Power Up

Once you have already connected the strip to the connector(and GND to Raspberry), you can connect and the adapter.
Be careful! First connect the adapter to the plug-in connector after that to the socket! Usually when you plug the adapter, the strip lights up for a second or two and then shuts down, but some of diodes stays shining. Don't worry it's ok. Why we have this result ? It's because when you plug the adapter there is something called peak current. It's big amount of current which goes trough strip, only once, only on plug.

Test it

Now we have everything connected, but nothing happens. That's true and that is because we didn't started any program on the Raspberry. Now you can turn on your Raspberry, grab your phone and connect to it. For testing purposes we have wrote a program for you, which you can start from "List all programs" tab in our mobile app. Start it and if something interesting happens you will know that everything is ok, else you should check again the wires to the pins, strip direction and especially GND connections.

Courses and lessons with this Tutorial

This Tutorial is used in the following courses and lessons

Perfect STEM course. Module 2 - 1D Games with Led strip.

Get a shiny RGB LED-strip. Connect it to a power supply and smart computer like Raspberry Pi, and you'll have your own playground. Create your own games with your unique rules in only one dimesnion. Play.

That's the second part of our perfect course. You move through the content, we check it and return feedback to you.

In the end, you should be able to program and design 1D games that make your games more interesting than ever. For everybody age 12+, 16+, 21+, 35+, etc

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Power and Test

Connect the +5V from the LED Strip to the "+" of plug-in connector. Connect the GND from the strip to the "-" of the connector. Plug in the adapter in to the plug-in connector. Now plug the power adapter in the socket in the coupler, or in the socket on the wall.