Your board has a WS281x RGB LED (NeoPixel, in Adafruit jargon) built in. Boards running the WipperSnapper firmware can be wirelessly controlled by Adafruit IO to interact with NeoPixels.

On this page, you'll learn how to change the color and brightness of the NeoPixel built into your board from Adafruit IO.

Where is the NeoPixel on my board?

An addressable NeoPixel LED is labeled Neo on the board.

Create the NeoPixel Component

On the device page, click the New Component (or "+") button to open the component picker.

Search for the component name by entering neopixel into the text box on the component picker, the list of components should update as soon as you stop typing

Filtering and searching for components

Since WipperSnapper supports such a large number of components, you can use keyword filtering. Try searching for various keywords, like:

  • component names: aht20servobuzzerbutton, neopixel, etc
  • sensor types: lighttemperaturepressurehumidity, etc
  • interface: i2cuartds18x20pin, etc (also I2C addresses e.g. 0x44)
  • vendor: AdafruitASAIRInfineonBosch, Honeywell, Sensirion, etc

There is also added product and documentation links for every component, follow the links beneath the component descriptions to be taken to the appropriate product page or Learn Guide

Select the NeoPixel from the list of results to go to the component configuration page.

There will be a back button if you select the wrong component, and you can use the Edit component icon (⚙️) on the device page to update the component configuration in the future.

The board NeoPixel pin is automatically found and selected.

Click Create Component

Behind the scenes, Adafruit IO sends a command to your board running WipperSnapper firmware telling it to configure the pin as a NeoPixel component with the settings from the form.

The Device page shows the NeoPixel component.

Set the NeoPixel's RGB Color

Since no colors have been set yet, the color picker's default value is #000000 (black in hex color code) and appears "off". You can change that to make the NeoPixel shine brightly! 

On the NeoPixel component, click the color dropper at the end of the color swatch list.

A color picker pops open! Next: learning how Adafruit IO uses hex color codes to represent the colors on your NeoPixel.

Hex Colors 101

The color picker on Adafruit IO uses hex color codes to represent Red, Green, and Blue values. For example, #FF0000 is the hex color code for the color red. The colors (#FF0000) red component is FF (255 translated to decimal), the green component is 00 and the blue component is 00. Translated to RGB format, the color is RGB (255, 0, 0)

Using the color picker, or by manually entering a hex color code, select a color.

When you're ready to set the color of your device's NeoPixel, click FILL WITH COLOR. The NeoPixel will immediately glow!

Set NeoPixel Brightness

If the NeoPixel is too bright (or too dim), you can change the overall brightness. Click the gear/cog icon on the NeoPixel component to open its settings.

On the NeoPixel component form, set Brightness to a value between 0 (fully off) and 255 (full brightness).

Click the Update Component button to send the updated configuration to your device. 

This guide was first published on Apr 20, 2022. It was last updated on Mar 28, 2024.

This page (NeoPixel LED) was last updated on Mar 26, 2024.

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