Pebble Pixels, also know as Seed Pixels, are a fantastic innovation in smart pixel technology. They're affordable and really robust. With silicone coated wire and resin coated pixels, you'll find that it's very hard to break these things, which makes them perfect for cosplay projects. They aren't as bright as "standard" pixel strips but they're affordable enough that you can pack a whole lot of pixels into your project, and I've found they're plenty bright enough for most dark environments.

They can be a little tricky to solder to, so take a deep breath and give yourself plenty of time. 

Which Wire is Which?

Take a look at your NeoPixel strand. It ships with a male connector on one end an a female on the other, but no markings telling you which wire is which or how to hook it up. Also, this stuff comes in long strands and you may want to use it for more than one project. You can cut between any two pixels and connect a controller, but that means soldering to these tiny, tricky wires.

NeoPixel strips and strands are directional. There is a data IN end and a data OUT end. The red and black wires could connect at either end, or somewhere in the middle, and the strip will work fine, but that data wire must be connected at IN end or the pixels won't light up.

There's no industry standard for which connector comes on the IN end. Some strands of pixels have male on the IN, some have female. This is kind of annoying, since it means we've got a 50/50 chance of guessing right. Here's how to improve those odds.

Step 2: Find the data wire and determine the IN end. The data wire is nearly always in the middle of the 3 wires. This is the tricky one, since if you connect to the wrong end the pixels won't work. These pixel strands are all different, and different lots from the same factory are not consistent either.  

Here's a good first-guess: with the connector pointing up, arrange the strand so the resin bump is facing you. Find the end that has the striped (5v) wire on the left. This is very likely the "in" end.

For this strand I'm going to guess that my male connector is the "in" connector. Based on this guess, I'll cut off the female connector at the other end of the strand and solder it to my Sparkle Motion board.

Sparkle Motion Board Setup

If you're using a brand-new strand, you're ready to go. Plug the female connector into the male connector on the strip and move on to the next step.

If your strip doesn't have a connector on the "in" end or if you've cut it off for another project, here's how to solder directly to the wires.

Strip about 1/4 inch of shielding from your male connector. Slide some heat shrink onto each of your 3 connector wires.

Splice the copper-wrapped wire to the red wire, the middle wire to the green wire, and the third wire to black. 

Plug your board into power. It comes pre-loaded with a rainbow animation for your pixels, so if your wiring is correct, your lights should come on. Hooray!

Troubleshooting

If your lights didn't come on, here are a few things to try:

1. Check your wiring! Be sure you soldered to the IN end of the LED strip. These strips can be inconsistent so this is a pretty common problem. Use an alligator clip to try the data wire on the other end.
2. If it won't work with this setup from either end of the strip, try switching the data and ground wires. Then try that from the other end.
3. Make sure nothing is shorting: no bare wires or alligator clips are touching any other bare wires, and there's no solder bridge between the solder pins.
4. You may have a board that doesn't have pre-loaded software. Go through the software install process for WLED and set up pin 32 in LED Settings, then see if the lights work. You need to power the pixels through the board, hooking a battery to the pixels to test for "light up" doesn't work as you need the data streaming also for smart pixels.

Mode Switch Button