Electronics Assembly
These lights have a male connector on the IN end and a female connector on the OUT end. The strands are directional -- they won't work if you hook up the wrong end.
Cut the female connector (from the OUT end) off your light strand, leaving a couple inches of wire attached. Leave the strand at full length for now. You'll be able to cut it to length later once it's installed in the coat, so you get the exact right number of pixels.
The cut connector will attach to the Mini Sparkle Motion to plug the lights in using the IN end / male connector.
If your strand doesn't have a connector, you'll want to add one. Check out the Seed Pixel Überguide for instructions - it can be tricky to figure out which wire goes where.
Strip a little bit of shielding from the three wires on your female connector and attach them to the Mini Sparkle Motion's screw terminal as shown: red to +5v, green to 32, and white to G.
Fur Trim + Cuffs Version
I found it easiest to finish installing the fur trim first so I could cut the LED strand to the correct length before wiring up the cuffs. Keep track of the "in" end of the strip when you cut it - you'll want to wire your ribbon cable and connectors to this IN end.
Measure the distance from your cuff, up the sleeve, across the shoulder and to the back of the hood and cut your ribbon cable to this length. Pull off one of the 4 wires on the strand - we only need three for this project - keeping the striped wire connected.
Solder the IN end of your LED strip to this length of wire, matching the striped wire on the ribbon cable with the banded wire on the lights. This is the power wire.
Solder your male JST connector to the other end of the ribbon cable, to plug into the Mini Sparkle Motion.
Make two of these, one for each arm.
Take a moment to trace your power wire from the striped wire on the lights, through the striped wire on the ribbon cable, and then note which wire on the connector is connected to this power wire. Plug your female connector into the male connector and keep tracing that power wire through. Make sure that's the one you plug into +5v on the Mini Sparkle Motion.
Many connectors are color coded, which should make lives easier - but not all connectors are color coded in the same way. Just because the wire on your connector is red does NOT mean it's the one connected to the power wire on the lights. Check and double check that you've got the wires in the right orientation before you solder.
You want 3 female connectors attached to the Mini Sparkle Motion: two soldered to pin 33 (one for each cuff) and one soldered to pin 32 (for the fur trim). All three of the power wires from the connectors will go to +5v, and all three ground wires will go to G.
The best way to achieve this is to splice all three power wires together to one red wire, which then connects to the +5v hole on the Mini Sparkle Motion. Splice the three ground wires from the connectors to one black wire, which will get soldered to the G pin. Splice a green wire onto two of the middle connector (data) wires and connect this one to 33.
For neatness, I soldered a short white wire onto the remaining middle connector wire so all wires are roughly the same length, and connected it to pin 32. See the wiring diagram page if you're confused.
Plug the Mini Sparkle Motion into the battery using the USB cable and see if your lights come on. If you haven't installed the software yet they'll come on in rainbow. If you've already installed the software and all goes well, they will come on in a warm yellow color.
If they come on in a different color, head back to the WLED Installation page and find the instructions for fixing the Color Order.
Troubleshooting
If your lights don't come on or behave the way you expect, here are a few things to try:
- Make sure your battery is charged and the switch is turned on - you should see some battery indicator lights on the side of your battery showing charge level.
- Try re-uploading the software
- Make sure your GPIO pin is set correctly in LED Settings -- it should be 32 and/or 33. If you don't reboot the board after setting up the audio reactive stuff, sometimes this won't get saved even if you set it up right.
- If the lights still don't come on, your strand may be wired a different way. Sometimes these strands come with the male on the OUT end and female on the IN. Try switching the connectors around to plug in the other end of the strand.
Page last edited August 18, 2026
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