That eliminates the need for a level shifter.
I'm going to step back for now. Too many cooks in this kitchen and I'm the least knowledgeable. I have a Nano 33 iot that I never removed from its box. Maybe it can be programmed via wifi.
Your project is very straightforward using the Adafruit NeoPixels with Adafruit libraries. They make it easy.
Noted, thanks. It's actually going to be 80 cm, I'll just use a minimum of 5A or something.
Yep, good point.
Thank you so much for your help. I'm confident I can go into the shop tomorrow and not buy the wrong parts. I'll order whatever they don't have online. For now I'll just practice with the simulator, I managed to take a pre made simulation, and change out the fastled code to make it do something else. Making some progress.
TBH if they are any kind of hobbyist shop and sell the stuff you need, half an hour there on a quiet morning would have saved almost this entire thread's worth of time.
At least now you can go and not appear completely clueless. 
And please follow your own advice and stuck to something simple for starters. Postpone the exotic plans for being able to control this form Turkey or whatever else can be done.
We've called this project simple, but TBH an Arduino, some neopixels, the RTC and power supply already are a step above truly noob simple. Let's call it reasonable, and it would be good for you to play in the simulator and in real life with truly simple things like pressing a button and getting "hello world!" to show up,on the serial monitor, or turn on an LED or whatever.
The kind of steps any well organized course of study woukd march you through, one giant cup of iced coffee at a time.
a7
I suppose that's right, but I'm not sure I would have been able to learn and memorize everything I've learned in this thread in 30 minutes verbally. This has been of tremendous help.
Yeah, I managed to connect and power a small array of the "neopixel compatible leds" in wokmi. I'll be reading and trying to understand what's happening in some of the slightly more complicated example sketches, like dimming.
Adafruit says 500uF to 1000uF. 470uF on a <1M strip is close enough in my book. If it was 8M long I would go with the 1000uF. Thoughts?
BTF-LIGHTING is a maker of WS2812/Neopixel strips. I find them 100% reliable. I use the standard connections mentioned here... external power supply with a capacitor and a Nano with a 470ohm resistor on the data line.
I'll see what I can find. They're cheap so not a big deal if I buy the wrong one.
Thanks, will have a look. Does it work with Adafruit library and doesn't require a driver board?
Yes. Power from the power supply. Signal from the signal supply (the Arduino).
I'm messing around in wokwi simulator, built a light strip and have walked through the basic instructions for both Adafruit Neopixel and FastLED. For simple things like turning the LEDs on and off or changing the color, I understand what I'm doing. But for example towards the end of the fastLED basic tutorial, it gives this code:
void loop() {
for(int dot = 0; dot < NUM_LEDS; dot++) {
leds[dot] = CRGB::Blue;
FastLED.show();
// clear this led for the next time around the loop
leds[dot] = CRGB::Black;
delay(30);
}
}
I don't know what "for", "int" and "dot" is. The code works, but only because I copied it. The tutorial doesn't go into that. Any good resources for learning basics like this?
Also, is it possible to add a clock to the arduino in wokwi or another simulator? It's not in the components list.
Arduino supplies a language reference for "for" and other keywords:
https://docs.arduino.cc/language-reference/en/structure/control-structure/for/
The
forstatement is used to repeat a block of statements enclosed in curly braces. An increment counter is usually used to increment and terminate the loop.
The int dot is the initialization of the counter used to cycle through the different LEDs.
Awesome. That's going to be very handy. I'll look for some tutorials that I can follow along to teach me some of the common functions. Should I look for tutorials specific to fastLED or Neopixel libraries, or tutorials about arduino coding in general?
Holy crap I just barked some orders at an AI, and wow I am seriously impressed.
This was my prompt:
Then I put it on a led strip in wokwi, and this is the result:
I feel very guilty for doing this.
Oops, had the wrong code in there. Check now, it's amazing what it did.
Yes, we can:
https://docs.arduino.cc/arduino-cloud/features/ota-getting-started/
But +1 to @alto777 statement:
Thank You for clarifying that.
I saw that but immediately disregarded it thinking it would be a paid service. That's great. The overwhelming amount of new information to learn is making me jump around between topics more than I should.
@hunterbiden - Using your list of items, make a drawing (pencil/paper, MSPaint, anything) of your circuit. This drawing will show (1) you understand how to connect the devices, (2) you have the needed items on your list, (3) you have items on your list you do not need, (4) you have too few of an item and need more, and (5) you have excess items on your list and might want to find a smaller quantity. Post that drawing here. After you finalize your drawing, write code to make it work using WOKWI.
That's 220VAC mains wiring in the UK: what are you doing?
DC wiring has two wires: red for positive and black for ground.
Will do that. I have installed an RTC and a LED strip in wokwi, and I'm now trying to run an AI generated code. This time this was my prompt:
It's running right now, I'm 3 minutes into a 30 minute sunrise cycle. The LEDs are on, let's see if they do what I want.
That's a good question, I don't know either. All I know is I wouldn't hire me to run the wiring in your house.
You can change the timing to speed things up. Divide all your times by 10 to make it go 10X faster. You'll have sunrise on 3 minutes rather than 30.
