hi,
I bought the neopixel-led-strip recommended by the tutorial
The tutorial shows 3 wires ( gnd, vcc, din)
But my led strip has 2 extra wires (red, white) .
Should I return the strip and order a 3 pin led strip?
Or how do I use the 2 extra wires with my ESP 32?
They are for additional power supply. Your strip is fine.
You need to provide more info about your setup if you need some help.
(project details, how many leds, your power supply specs etc)
each neopixel can draw 60 mA if you light up green blue and red to full brightness.
with a strip containing 100 neopixels this make up 6 A.
6A is a such high current that this current can't be transported by these standard jumper-wires or a similar thin wire.
And therefore you have additionally the two extra wires.
You can supply more than 1 neopixel from the microcontrollers 5V pin.
You would damage the protection diode on the microcontroller-board.
where? show link or pictures of the strip
this is what i bought neopixel-led-strip
I plan to drive 10 Nanopixels off a gpio on a ESP32 - is that safe amount of amps?
every 5 variants are 3 pin strips, not helps at all. what did you get? (i personally will refund such unwanted good)
If, by this inexact statement, you really mean you'll power those Nanopixels, then NO, it's not.
Neopixels require a power source separate from your ESP32; the GND, or (-), of that power source MUST be connected to the GND of your ESP32.
I have no experience with whether a GPIO pin of an ESP32 will properly drive the data input pin of a Neopixel string, others may have more input on that.
Some people claim they will work at 3.3V, the ones I have don't.
You will have to try it and see but you will need a separate 3.3V supply for the strip. A 0.5A to 1A supply should be OK fot 10 pixels
When driving the data pin of addressable LED strips from a 3.3V processor, I always use a 3.3V --> 5V buffer such as 74AHCT125. It accepts 3.3V logic to its input, drives 5V logic from its output and is very fast. Obviously, I also power the LED strip from 5V.
The above technique works well for both Neopixel-type as well as SPI (eg APA102) - based strips.
For my experience, you can safely run 10 neopixels powered from Esp32 devboard 5V pin (not from gpio) and controlling them directly from gpio without level shifter. As long as you have good quality 5.0V >1A power supply.
As this is not a programming question, your topic has been moved to a more suitable location on the forum.