A bit of wiring is necessary to connect everything to the Metro M4 microcontroller. For this project,  connect the NeoPixel strip and the speaker power directly to the 5V DC power supply so that they don't overload the Metro M4. Other than that, we will just be connecting a button and a few components for the audio output.

Audio Wiring

We will be using the Analog 0 Pin as an Audio out pin, but we do need to add some components to trim the signal and make this sound good.

  1. Solder the the Black wire to the common pin on the 3.5mm Stereo Headphone Jack.
  2. Use some Blue wire to jump the outer two pins on the Headphone Jack together since we will be using a Mono signal.
  3. Connect one of the outer pins from the Headphone Jack to the negative side, the one with the white stripe, of a 100uf Capacitor.
  4. Connect the other side of the Capacitor to one of the outer pins of a 10k Potentiometer.
  5. Finally connect a Blue wire to the center pin, or common pin, on the Potentiometer.

The Black and Blue wires should now be set to connect with the GND and A0 pins on the Metro M4.

NeoPixel Wiring

Because we will be using a fair amount of NeoPixels, we need to connect the power directly to the 5V DC so that we don't overload the Metro M4.

  1. Make sure that each of the following wires are about 10 inches long.
  2. Connect the Red wire to the positive side, the side without the white stripe, of a 4700uF Capacitor.
  3. Connect the Black wire to the negative side, the side with the white stripe, of the Capacitor.
  4. Add an Orange wire to the Din pin, usually a White wire, at the beginning of the NeoPixel string.

The Orange wire should now be ready to connect to pin 2 on the Metro M4.

Power Connector Wiring

Along with the NeoPixels, we also need to power the speakers with our 5V DC connection. The speakers have a USB connector as it's power connection but this can be removed to expose a Red and Black wire.

  1. Use wire cutters to cut the wire just behind the speakers USB connector.
  2. Strip the outer wire casing off about 3 inches down to get to the Red and Black wires.
  3. Strip about 0.25 inches off of the ends of the Black and Red wires for the Speaker and the NeoPixels.
  4. Twist the two Red wire ends together and insert them into the + side of the Female DC Power adapter screw terminal.
  5. Twist the two Black wire ends together and insert them into the - side of the Female DC Power adapter screw terminal.

This is now ready to be connected to the DC Barrel Jack Splitter later.

This guide was first published on Apr 08, 2020. It was last updated on Mar 19, 2024.

This page (Wiring) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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