Hi! Merry Christmas. Tinkering with my new toy. I have connected 12v to a strand of 150 WS2812s to my bench power supply and the same 12v going into the strip. After the lights are on for about 20 seconds, the power supply (displaying ~1amp) spins up its fan and then the ESP32 is no longer pingable on the network. I suspect it is overheating? I’m somewhat of a novice and wanted to test some strips I’ve bought over the years. Any tips as to what is happening?
Welcome to the community! There’s over-voltage protection so you don’t fry the board on 12v, but for sustained use you need to give it 5v power. You can either add a 12v—>5v level shifter (there’s one sold for cheap on this site or Amazon probably has them), or you can power the PixelBlaze via 5v USB power and then just do a common ground wire as well as data wire between the PixelBlaze and the 12v lights. (Just disconnecting the positive).
Alternatively, if you’re using bench power, you can give bench 5v power to the PB and 12v power to the LEDs, again with a common ground wire, or use 5v native LEDs if you have multiple types in the house.
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