Arduino Christmas LED strips

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello everyone, I would like to buy a led stripe that can be controlled with Arduino for my Christmas tree. Wich LED stripe and charger should I buy if I wanna connect everything with my home wall plug? I googled something but it’s not clear for me what should I connect (and how) for not burning everything or for powering enough the leds and let arduino pin signals arrive on them. I would also like to add other stuffs on the circuit like a PIR sensor or a ky-038 sound sensor. I connected years ago that sound sensor with a RGB led (https://youtu.be/cMnybyccVuo?si=7XFzzzJpP3YaoVSU) and I would like to do something similar now with the whole led stripe.

2

I would recommend a strip with WS2812B LEDs. You can create many different and interesting effects with them.

3

I also recommend WS2812B approach. But instead of led strips that are not really usable for christmas tree, look for WS2812B STRING. They have same individual control, but have a form of traditional xmas tree lights.

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4

Thanks, but how can I connect the strip with the wall plug and with arduino? What should I buy for that?

5

Thank you too, they seem very nice, but how can I connect them with the wall plug and with arduino? The list of component I need is:

•the led string

•arduino UNO (for example)

And what else?

6

Beefy 5V power supply that can supply enough current for the LEDs (depends on how many LEDs you have).
Then follow some WS2812B (aka Neopixel) tutorial or read hundreds of topics here on the forum.

7

The recommended LED strings by @kmin do indeed seem more suitable for a Christmas tree and the link he/she provided has a good description of their use. For each LED the microcontroller must have 3 bytes of memory and in the case of Arduino UNO this means a little over 600 LEDs but it also matters what other variables you have in the program. If you are not going to use the full brightness of the LEDs and are using the FastLED library, which I highly recommend, you could limit the consumption in software and thus you will not need such a powerful power supply - an example command is FastLED.setMaxPowerInVoltsAndMilliamps ( 5, 200 ) which limits the total consumption to 200mA.

8

Thank you all! You have been very helpful