DotStar / APA102 LEDs
Your board also supports running the faster refresh rate 4-wire RGB LEDs commonly known as APA102-compatible (DotStar, in Adafruit jargon). Boards running the WipperSnapper firmware can be wirelessly controlled by Adafruit IO to interact with Dotstars.
On this page, you'll learn how to change the color and brightness of the DotStars connected to your board from Adafruit IO.
Wiring
The choice of pins for the data and clock lines is flexible on the ESP32, so follow your products wiring.
Here there is the Adafruit Mini Sparkle Motion connected to a DotStar strip, optionally using the screw terminal version (or soldering your own connector) aids easy reassembly and swapping lights / projects.
For easier daisy-chaining and quicker connections it is customary to connect a JST-SM 4-pin cable to LEDs.
Follow the wiring instructions for your DotStar strip, making sure to identify the Data In (DI) and Clock In (CI) pins and suitable voltage range. Usually there will be D/C labels on two of the contacts, with an arrow to show LED order, and I / O for the input or output directions.
- Board 5V to LED 5V
- Board GND to LED GND
- Board GPIO 32 to LED DI
- Board GPIO 33 to LED CI
Create a DotStar Component
On the device page, click the New Component (or +) button to open the component picker.
Search for the component name by entering dotstar into the text box on the component picker, the list of components should update as soon as you stop typing
WipperSnapper supports such a large number of components we added filtering!
Try searching for various keywords, like:
- component names:
aht20,servo,buzzer,button,dotstar, etc - sensor types:
light,temperature,pressure,humidity, etc - interface:
i2c,uart,ds18x20,pin, etc (also I2C addresses e.g.0x44) - vendor:
Adafruit,ASAIR,Infineon,Bosch,Honeywell,Sensirion, etc
We’ve also added product and documentation links to every component, follow the links beneath the component descriptions to be taken to the appropriate product page or Learn-Guide
Select the DotStar 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.
Select the DotStar Data Pin, matching it to the board pin connected to the Data In LED connection (GPIO 32).
Choose the DotStar Clock Data pin, using GPIO 33 if following the wiring example.
Each LED strip can have a different number of pixels, so update the Number of Pixels to match your product.
Here I've used a 0.5meter section, and the product is 144 LEDs/m, so that will be 72 LEDs in 0.5meters.
Select the Blue Green Red (BGR) for Color order (unless your device is different - if so then try the BRG one).
Click Create Component
Behind the scenes, Adafruit IO sends a command to your board running WipperSnapper firmware telling it to initialize a new DotStar strand with the settings from the form.
The Device page shows the DotStar component.
Set the DotStar'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". Let's change that to make the DotStars shine brightly!
On the device page, click the color dropper at the end of the color swatch list.
The Dotstar component should expand, revealing its color picker.
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 DotStars, click FILL WITH COLOR. The DotStars attached to your board will glow with the color you selected!
Set DotStar Brightness
If the DotStar strand is too bright (or too dim), you can change the overall brightness. Click the gear/cog icon on the DotStar component to open its settings.
On the DotStar 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.
Different versions of DotStar LEDs expect to receive color data in a different order…and occasionally it may change if it improves production efficiency or yield.
If you are having this issue - Try changing the Color Order setting (within the DotStar component's settings) until you find one that works with your hardware.
WipperSnapper firmware automatically performs gamma correction using the gamma32 function in the Adafruit_DotStar library. However, it may not be completely identical to the gamma correction used by your operating system or monitor.
There are future plans for setting the colors of individual pixels, but at this time DotStar support on WipperSnapper currently only supports filling an entire strand of pixels with one color.
Page last edited October 06, 2025
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