The LED strand comes with a 3-pin JST connector soldered to the IN end with color coded wires. You can leave it in place and connect a mated JST connector to your Mini Sparkle Motion board -- this makes it easy to detach the board if you ever want to -- or you can cut off the JST connector, strip the wires a bit, and solder or screw the strand directly to the Mini Sparkle Motion.
Attach the wires to your Sparkle Motion board using the solder pads or the screw terminal, depending on which version you have.
The red wire connects to +5v, the green wire goes to 32, and the black wire to G.
If you've done it right, the lights will come on in a lovely color-shifting rainbow. Or, if you've already loaded and configured WLED, they will come on in a solid color. The default "correct" boot-up color in WLED is a golden amber/yellow. However, my lights came on in green, which means I needed to change a setting in WLED so the software matches reality.
Head to projectname.local (mine is mushrooms.local) in your web browser and go to Config / LED Preferences. Here in the settings you can change Color Order to RGB, which should change the lights to yellow and make the colors on the strand match the colors in the software.
Troubleshooting
If your lights didn't come on at all:
- Check the wiring and be sure the wires from the lights correspond to the correct pads. Sometimes connectors have mismatched wiring so be sure the red wire from your male connector is lined up with the red wire on your female connector. If these get switched your lights won't work.
- Check Config/LED Settings in WLED. Be sure pin 32 is selected as the GPIO pin. If it won't let you select 32, go back to the WLED Setup page in this guide and set up Audio Reactive mode first -- pin 32 is assigned to the microphone by default, for some reason, so that needs to change before 32 is available for the LED strip. Reboot the board, and try changing the LED settings again.
- Check to be sure you soldered / screwed to pin 32 and not 33 -- they're right next to each other. Either one will work, but the software needs to match the physical wiring. If you connected to 33, change the LED Settings page to use GPIO 33.
- Make sure all three wire connections are secure -- if you're using the screw terminal, tug on the wires to be sure they don't come loose. For either type of attachment, make sure no stray hair-thin wires are bridging across the pads or the terminals.
- Try reinstalling the WLED software.
If your lights are flickering or only half on:
- Unspool the coil of lights and see if that fixes it. These wires are coated with a very thin protective layer and too much flexing or tight winding can sometimes make them short out.
- Be sure you have 100 lights defined in your strand in LED Settings.
Page last edited December 05, 2025
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