If this is your first time using the Adafruit Trinket microcontroller, work through the Adafruit Trinket M0 or Introducing Trinket guide first. This explains how to set up the Arduino IDE software and load code onto the board. Don’t continue here until you have something like the “pulse” example working.
If you encounter problems, post on the Adafruit Forums for help…it’s much easier to troubleshoot and replace parts before they’re soldered together and glued into some goggles!
Let’s get the trickiest soldering out of the way first, installing the JST battery connector on the underside side of the Trinket board…
Here’s a circuit diagram of what we’re aiming for. Of course the real thing won’t be all rectilinear like this…we’ll walk you through each step.
Solder one end of the 3-wire cables to the IN, V+ and G points on the two NeoPixel rings. There are two V+ and two G holes on each ring…either one is fine, they’re connected.
Keep track of the colors you use for IN, V+ and G…it’s vitally important to make the right connections at the other end.
(These are the labels on the front of the rings. The back-side labels are a little more verbose.)
Notice how the wires are inserted from the front, then soldered on the back of the ring. Do it this way if you’re new to soldering…it’s much easier. It can work the other way too…insert from back, solder on front…but the component tolerances are extremely tight and beginners often get a blob of solder in the wrong place and the LEDs don’t work.
Next we connect the other ends of the 3-wire cables…first one to the Trinket, second one joins the two rings…
Trinket |
First Ring |
BAT+ |
V+ (either one) |
Gnd |
G (either one) |
#0 |
IN |
First Ring |
Second Ring |
V+ (either one) |
V+ (either one) |
G (either one) |
G (either one) |
out |
IN |
The second cable is the “visible from the outside” one, if that matters to your color scheme.
Notice here how the second cable enters the first ring from behind, then the wires are inserted from the front and soldered on the back…the cables should not overlap any LEDs on the front.
If possible, try to align the rings so they’re pointed nearly the same direction (use a landmark like the Adafruit logo for reference). This is not required, but it’s a little easier to program animation effects when both rings have the same orientation.
We’ll clip the wire ends flush in a moment, but let’s test that everything works first…
