Hi! I stumbled across this forum after purchasing a PiPixel on Tindie a few days ago.
I’m trying to find a solution to turn on/off and dim 2835 type led strips using a raspberry Pi 3. I realize that these are not addressable like most LED strips used with the PiPixel, but is there any way that the PiPixel can be used to run simple on/off/dimming routines with these type strips?
Assuming you are talking about “analog” LED strips (the kind with usually gnd, red, green, blue connections) then no - there’s no way for the PiPixel to do anything at all with those. You need to drive them with one MOSFET per color channel and then drive those with PWM signals for each channel.
There’s no product I’m aware of that wraps this up nicely for you unfortunately.
Basically the only thing you can control with the PiPixel are “digital” strips that use one of the following protocols:
APA102, LPD8806, WS2801, and WS281X - technically a few others that are not common.
Hope this helps.
Adam,
Thanks for the quick reply. These strips only have one channel, as they’re built with a diffuser to make them look like neon lights. This is what I purchased. Would that mean I only need one MOSFET to control the single channel? Looks like I also need to pickup some addressable strips for my new PiPixel lol.
Ah, gotcha. Yeah… just one MOSFET. Just search for “MOSFET LED strip control” and you’ll find lots of tutorials. But in your case you only need the one channel. The Pi has PWM on GPIO 18 I think… but that’s it.