All Adafruit NeoPixel products have three main pins:
- a 5 volt pin, sometimes labeled 5, V, 5V or +
- a ground (GND) pin, sometimes labeled GND or -
- a Data In pin (someties labeled DATA or DIN).
At the end of the NeoPixels or on the same board for a ring is a Data Out (DOUT) pin to connect to another NeoPixel product Data In pin if needed.
Crickit has a NeoPixel terminal block as shown at left. It works perfectly for NeoPixel strip connections.
Check carefully for the wire colors and wire ordering as they may vary from product to product. The markings on the products are always consistent so check those strips, rings, etc. for the pin names.
The examples in this guide will use a strip of NeoPixels. You are free to mix in strips, rings, etc. If you plan to use more than 100 NeoPixels in total, please read the page "You Want Even More NeoPixels?" to get a feel for using a large number of pixels.
Differences Between Crickit Boards
This output is slightly different depending on what kind of Crickit you have:
- If you have a Circuit Playground Crickit then the NeoPixels are driven by the Circuit Playground A1 pad by default. This way you can use the MakeCode emulator and built in Circuit Playground CircuitPython library. However, if you want, you can cut the jumper underneath the Crickit and solder closed the ss pad so that the seesaw chip controls the NeoPixels (for advanced hackers only).
- If you have a Crickit FeatherWing then the NeoPixels are driven by the seesaw chip on the Crickit. It's very similar to use of NeoPixels on other platforms. No extra pins are needed from your Feather. The NeoPixels are controlled by Crickit on seesaw pin #20.
- For the Crickit for micro:bit, P16 is the pin for controlling the NeoPixels.
