1m NeoPixel strip - plz confirm hardware requirements

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello everyone! I am a new user and am looking to get into wearable tech for cosplay purposes.

I am helping my wife construct a costume that will use a 1m strip of NeoPixels (60 NeoPixels in total). Our goal is to simply have the pixels on the strip fade between between red, orange, yellow, and white. (We will essentially be recreating this project: Intro & Materials | Animated NeoPixel Glow Fur Scarf | Adafruit Learning System)

I want to "overbuild" this so that no components will be stressed or become hot, mainly because all the electronics will be enclosed within what will be a highly-flammable costume!

However, there are some inconsistencies between the tutorials we have seen for different projects and the Adafruit NeoPixel Uberguide available on the Adafruit website. Specifically, the example tutorial above does not include a resistor in the data line or a capacitor between the DC power and the NeoPixel strip. But this page in the NeoPixel Uberguide shows both of those components present:

So considering all that, this are the components we think we will need (remember, we want to overbuild this to prevent any safety issues.)

  1. 1x 1m of 60/m NeoPixels: Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip - Black 60 LED [BLACK] : ID 1461 : $99.80 : Adafruit Industries, Unique & fun DIY electronics and kits
  2. 1x 20,000 mAh battery pack that has two USB outlets. (5V/3.4A max output)
  3. 1x 1000 uf capacitor (because we will have a large battery capacity, and assuming my battery pack is not "smart" and always provides power at the outputs)
  4. 1x 470 ohm resistor (to prevent burning out the first NeoPixel due to possible data spikes)

So my questions:
What control board should we use? (Specifically, will a Gemma be fine, or should we upgrade to something more powerful like a Nano?)
Will my two-port battery pack be enough to power both the board and the strip? (5V/3.4A max)
Is there anything else obvious I am forgetting?

Thank-you kindly!

John

2

What control board should we use? (Specifically, will a Gemma be fine, or should we upgrade to something more powerful like a Nano?)

All the smarts happen in the LED strip. It doesn't take much "power" to tell an LED what color to be.

Will my two-port battery pack be enough to power both the board and the strip? (5V/3.4A max)

That depends on how long you want to power the LEDs, and how many will be on at a time.

3

cafeoctanecosplay:
What control board should we use? (Specifically, will a Gemma be fine, or should we upgrade to something

If the Gemma is supported by Adafruit's Neopixel library then it will work.

cafeoctanecosplay:
Will my two-port battery pack be enough to power both the board and the strip? (5V/3.4A max)

Most battery packs are rated in NNNN mA/hour.
If you calculate the worst case current draw with all the LEDs on (white color), then you can approximate how long your display will run.

.

4

Gemma V2 appears to support NeoPixels just fine (I see lots of other projects that use NeoPixels in different configurations), and the battery is pretty beefy so I should be able to run for some time.

Time to buy and get cracking.

Thanks all! Much appreciated.