Assembly is fairly simple for this project. Watch the video tutorial for a complete step-by-step.
Solder headers onto the QT Py and BFF to stick them together. If you're new to soldering headers, check out this How to Solder Headers guide.
The boards align back-to-back, so I soldered regular headers onto the QT Py and female socket headers onto the back of the BFF.
Trim the sensor legs about halfway down. Cut the yellow wire off your stemma connector - we only need 3 wires for the sensor.
With the sensor bump facing you and the legs pointing down, slip the red wire onto the leg on the right, the black wire to the middle leg, and the blue wire to the leg on the left.
Cover the connections with heat shrink, and squirt a little hot glue inside before you shrink it down to hold the connections firmly together.
Solder to the stemma connector as follows:
- IR sensor red --> stemma red
- IR sensor black --> stemma black
- IR sensor white --> stemma blue
The yellow wire on the stemma connector is unused.
Plug your smaller stemma wire into the QT Py's stemma port, and your larger stemma wire into the IR sensor. Connect the two together by soldering or just plugging in the male and female ends.
Plug the sensor into the Stemma port on the QT Py and the NeoPixel strip into the BFF's NeoPixel port. Plug the QT Py into power with the USB cable. And you're in business!
Troubleshooting
If the lights don't come on, or the remote doesn't seem to do anything, here are a couple things to try:
- Open the WLED software and go to the LED Settings page. Make sure you have the correct pin (GPIO) entered here. The BFF's port is attached to A3, which corresponds to digital pin 15 (A3 is the analog pin number. Find this out in the pinout diagram in the QT PY guide).
- Also be sure you've chosen IR GPIO pin 22 in the WLED software on the same page, and that you've selected your remote from the dropdown.
- Wiggle the connections on the IR sensor to be sure they haven't pulled loose.
- If it's still not working, head over to the NeoPixel Uberguide and try uploading some basic code, just to see whether the problem is with your wiring or with the software. If you can get the lights to come on using Arduino or CircuitPython, the trouble is with the software -- try reinstalling.
Page last edited January 13, 2025
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