Can I give it 12v, or do I need to drop it to 5v first?
It’s 5v only.
Don’t give it 12v, you’ll ruin it.
Alright. What about the full size pixelblaze, is it tolerant of higher voltages? I thought I remembered Ben saying it can handle up to 18v.
From the specs on the main website:
- Power supply: micro-USB (1.8 A pass-through) or 5 V back-feed from the LED strip, with an onboard 3.3 V regulator for the ESP32 and expansion boards
- Power protection: reverse-polarity protection and up to 18 V overvoltage protection to prevent damage from common wiring mistakes
In other words, don’t do that, it’s not meant for it, and it might not blow up if you screw up, but it certainly won’t work.
The Pro Output Expander can take 12V and has a built-in 500mA 5V buck converter to power a connected Pixelblaze, but it looks like it might be priced in a way to represent dwindling supply (perhaps for supply chain issues, @wizard)?
@cjn566, I’ve been backfeeding 5V for Pixelblaze from 12V strips with this small buck converter ($2 ea).
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Alright, that clears it up for me. Thanks!
Yes both need about 5v. The pico should survive up to 6v. The standard has protection up to 18v, but still needs closer to 5v to run.
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