Sparkfun Electronics WS2812 Breakout Hookup Manual

WS2812 Breakout Hookup Guide

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Introduction

The addressable WS2812 and WS2812B are unassuming RGB LEDs with an integrated control circuit hidden
underneath. We love the simplicity of this little IC/LED combo. It's at the heart of a number of products. To name a
few, the WS2812B is included in the simple WS2812B Breakout Board.

Sewable LEDs

The LilyPad Pixel shares the same circuit as the breakout board, but it comes on a circular, purple LilyPad board.
These are perfect for sewing onto clothing or other fabric, and embedding into an e-textiles project.

SparkFun RGB LED Breakout - WS2812B

 BOB-13282

LED Strips

The WS2812B serves as the heart and soul of a variety of LED strips. These strips come in sealed and unsealed:
5 meter sealed, 1m sealed, 5m bare, and 1m bare.

LilyPad Pixel Board

 DEV-13264

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Sealed (5m)

 COM-1 2028

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Sealed (1m)

 COM-1 2027

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Bare (5m)

 COM-1 2026

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Bare (1m)

 COM-1 2025

Looking for smaller, higher density strips, or ones that emit on the side of the strip? The WS2812B's can also be
manufactured in smaller packages such as the ones listed below.

Note: While APA102's are not compatible with the WS2812's, the APA104's are compatible with the
WS2812B's!

Skinny LED RGB Strip - Addressable, 1m,
144LEDs (SK6812)

 COM-1 4732

Skinny Side-Lit LED RGB Strip - Addressable,
1m, 60LEDs (SK6812)

 COM-1 4731

Skinny LED RGB Strip - Addressable, 1m,
60LEDs (SK6812)

 COM-1 4730

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Sealed, 1m
(APA104)

 COM-1 5205

LED RGB Strip - Addressable, Bare, 1m
(APA104)

 COM-1 5206

Matrices, Rings, and Stick

Depending on the project, they can also be populated on PCBs as a matrix, ring, or stick. These can be useful for
marquees or adding unique animations to your project!

Warm White, Cool White, and Amber

Looking for a more natural white instead of mixing RGB? There are also WS2812's that have warm white, cool
white, and amber color. Add ambient or task lighting to your projects with the tri-color strips.!

Flexible LED Matrix - WS2812B (8x32 Pixel)

 COM-1 3304

NeoPixel NeoMatrix 8x8 - 64 RGB LED

 COM-1 2662

NeoPixel Ring - 16 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED

 COM-1 2664

NeoPixel Stick - 8 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED

 COM-1 2661

NeoPixel Ring - 24 x WS2812 5050 RGB LED

 COM-1 2665

Pimoroni Unicorn HAT

 DEV-14037

Through-Hole Packages

Lastly, if you require WS2812B LEDs in through-hole form, they are also available as a through-hole package. The
size of the bulb can either be 8mm or 5mm. The LEDs can be diffused or clear depending on how they were
manufactured: Diffused 8mm (5 Pack), Diffused 5mm (5 Pack), and Clear 5mm (5 Pack).

White Tri-Color LED Strip - Addressable, Sealed
(1m)

 COM-1 3898

LED - RGB Addressable, PTH, 5mm Diffused (5
Pack)

 COM-1 2986

LED - RGB Addressable, PTH, 5mm Clear (5
Pack)

 COM-1 2999

LED - RGB Addressable, PTH, 8mm Diffused (5
Pack)

 COM-1 2877

What makes the WS2812B really special is the way its controlled. The IC embedded into the LED communicates
via a very unique one-wire interface. With the help of some libraries, they're really very easy to control. Plus
they're chain-able -- the output of one LED can be connected to the input of another to create strips of hundreds of
LEDs. The more boards you have linked together, the fancier your animations can be!

In this tutorial we're going to get you familiar with the workings of the WS2812 and WS2812B. We'll go over some
of the ways you might want to hook up to the breakout board, LilyPad, or strips. And we'll close the tutorial out with
some example Arduino code.

Required Materials

WS2812-Based LED Board or Strip

Stating the obvious: you'll need a WS2812-based board or strip. The more the merrier! In the example hookup,
we'll be linking together five breakout boards, but the example should be adaptable to the other WS2812-based
products. Grab however many you think you'll need for your project, regardless of how many you have, it's not
enough.

Microcontroller

Aside from the star of the show, you'll also need a microcontroller. Something that can send the series of 1's and
0's used to control the LEDs. Our go-to is the classic Arduino Uno, but any Arduino board should do.

Limitation on AVR-based Microcontrollers : If you are using an AVR-based microcontroller for large LED
installations, there is a limitation with the number of WS2812s LEDs used. This is dependent on the

Arduino Pro Mini 328 - 5V/16MHz

 DEV-11113

Pro Micro - 5V/16MHz

 DEV-12640

Arduino Mega 2560 R3

 DEV-11061

Arduino Uno - R3 SMD

 DEV-11224

microcontroller's memory and the size of the program. For an ATmega328P-based microcontroller (i.e.
RedBoard Programmed with Arduino, Arduino Uno, Arduino Pro Mini, etc.), it can be up to ~300-400 LEDs.
Check out Katerborg's note about using WS2812's with different Arduinos:

KATERBORG: POWERING LOTS OF LEDS FROM ARDUINO

If you want to get really crazy, hackaday demonstrates how to power 1000 NeoPixels with the Arduino’s
limited RAM.

HACKADAY: DRIVING 1000 NEOPIXELS WITH 1K OF ARDUINO RAM

Or you can try to adapt the example code to your favorite microcontroller. Teensy development boards are an
excellent choice when using a large number of WS2812 LEDs.

Note: Depending on the amount of WS2812 LEDs that are being used with the Teensy, you may need to use
the octows2811 adapter board:

PJRC: OCTOWS2811 LED LIBRARY

Teensy LC

 DEV-13305

Teensy 3.6

 DEV-14057

Teensy 3.5

 DEV-14055

Wires

You'll also need some way to connect between the board and an Arduino. You could use a combination of male
headers and breadboard (solderless or solderable). Or you could just go with a few pieces of hookup wire or 3-pin
JST-SM pigtail connectors.

Tools

In order to get a good, solid, electrically-sound connection to the breakout boards, you'll need to solder to the
pins. That means you'll need at least a basic soldering iron, solder, and general soldering accessories. Check out
our how to solder tutorial for help, if this is you first time soldering.

SparkFun Solder-able Breadboard

 PRT-12070

Break Away Headers - Straight

 PRT-00116

LED Strip Pigtail Connector (3-pin)

 CAB-1 4575

Breadboard - Translucent Self-Adhesive (Red)

 PRT-1131 7

Solder Lead Free - 100-gram Spool

 TOL-09325

Soldering Iron - 30W (US, 110V)

 TOL-09507

Suggested Reading

These boards aren't too hard to use. If you've done anything with Arduino before, you'll be prepared to work with
the WS2812. If you're not exactly sure what this "Arduino" thing is, or if you're not familiar with the topics below,
consider reading their tutorials:

How to Solder: Through-Hole Soldering

This tutorial covers everything you need to know about
through-hole soldering.

Binary

Binary is the numeral system of electronics and
programming...so it must be important to learn. But,
what is binary? How does it translate to other numeral
systems like decimal?

How to Power a Project

A tutorial to help figure out the power requirements of
your project.

How to Use a Breadboard

Welcome to the wonderful world of breadboards. Here
we will learn what a breadboard is and how to use one
to build your very first circuit.

What is an Arduino?

What is this 'Arduino' thing anyway?

WS2812 Hardware Overview

Note: Make sure to not confuse the WS2812-based IC with the APA102 addressable LEDs. The APA102
LEDs are very similar to WS2812s with a few caveats: APA102s can be controlled with a standard SPI
interface, and they have an extremely high PWM frequency. The APA102 requires the FastLED library to
control. The FastLED library does support the WS2812 chipset. Try checking out the Lumenati Hookup Guide
that uses the APA102-based LEDs for more information.

The WS2812-based LED is much more than meets the eye. It may look like a common 5050-sized (5x5mm) LED,
but there's actually an integrated circuit embedded inside there too. If you look really hard, you can see the tiny
black chip hidden in there, along with minuscule gold wires connecting the chip to the LED. Below are images of
the WS2812 and WS2812B zoomed in.

Pretty nifty view at the guts of the WS2812. Another nifty view for the WS2812B.

The LED itself is like any RGB (Red/Green/Blue) LED. The brightness of each color can be adjusted using pulse­width modulation to one of 256 different levels. That means there are 16,777,216 (256 ) possible combinations of
colors. You can produce any color from white to black (off), or salmon to sienna.

Breakout Board Pinout

The breakout board mounts that multi-talented LED onto a PCB, and breaks out the few pins required to control
the LED.

3

Retired WS2812 breakout board's pinout. WS2812B breakout board's pinout.

Four unique pins are broken out:

"5V" - The input voltage will can vary based on the IC version's specifications:

WS2812 -- This should be a regulated supply voltage between 5V and about 7V. More than that
could harm the LED, less than 5V will either reduce brightness, or it just won't turn on.

WS2812B -- This should be a regulated supply voltage between 3.3V and about 5V.
GND -- The common, ground, 0V reference supply voltage.
DI -- Data from a microcontroller (or another WS2812/WS2812B pixel) comes into this pin.
DO -- Data is shifted out of this pin, to be connected to the input of another pixel or left floating if it is the last

link in the chain.

We recommend matching the input voltage with the logic level for the data lines (DI and DO). So if you are
powering the WS2812B breakout board with 5V, you will be connecting DI and DO with a logic level of 5V.

Data Transmission Interface

Note: This stuff is ugly, and not critical to understand if you just want to use the breakout board. (That's what
libraries are for, right?!) It's interesting to talk about, because the interface is so unique.

The communication interface between a microcontroller and the WS2812 is weird. It's one wire, but it's not like a
standard, UART serial interface. This interface is very time-specific. Both a logic 0 and a logic 1 require a square
pulse, and it's the length of the pulse that defines which it is.

Timing diagram for a single bit of value 0 or 1.

The data is sent in a sequence containing 24 of those bits -- 8 bits for each color -- followed by a low "reset" pulse
of at least 50µs.

A sequence of 24 timed-bits sets the color for each channel. 8-bits per channel. Green first, then red, then blue.

The larger the value of a specific color is, the brighter it will be. If every color is set to 0, the LED will be off. If every
color is set to max -- 255 -- the LED will be as bright and white as can be.

This is all to say that the interface is very time-specific. To run the LEDs you'll need a real-time processor, like an
Arduino; microprocessors like those on the Raspberry Pi or pcDuino can't give you a reliably-timed pulse. Even if
one bit is less than a microsecond off, that could mean the difference between purple and maroon.

LilyPad Pixel

Want to embed the WS2812 LEDs into your clothing? We have a thing for that! The LilyPad Pixel Board is the e­textile version of the WS2812 Breakout. The functionality and pinouts are exactly the same, though the pins are in
slightly different location to make threaded traces easier.

Rather than solder these boards, you can use conductive thread to connect them to other LilyPad boards. You can
control individual LEDs, or chain them together to create a multitude of colors on your clothing. The examples in
this tutorial use the WS2812 Breakout, but you can substitute the LilyPad Pixel for any of the breakout boards.

For more information on the LilyPad Pixel Board, check out this other tutorial.

Addressable LED Strips

If you need an abundance of WS2812 LEDs in a slick, pre-assembled form factor these addressable LED strips
might be for you.

LilyPad Pixel Board Hookup Guide

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015
Add changing colors to your wearable projects using LilyPad Pixel Boards.

The LED strips come on a reel as shown above.

The WS2812 Addressable LED strips come in a few flavors, which vary by size and sealant. You can get them in
either 1m or 5m lengths, high density, or side emitting. For each length the strip, they can be either covered by a
waterproof sealant or left bare.

5m Sealed
1m Sealed
5m Bare
1m Bare
1m Bare, Skinny
1m Bare, Skinny, High Density
1m Bare, Skinny, Side Lit
1m Sealed, Whtie Tri-Color

The waterproofed strips are rated IP65 -- dust tight and protected from water jets.

Each strip has 60 LEDs per meter, which are spaced about 1.65cm away from each other.

Connecting to the Strips

Each end of the LED strip is terminated with a set of three colored wires: red, green, and yellow. Two wires are for
power, and the third transmits data either into our out of the strip:

Wire

Color

Function Notes for the WS2812 Notes for the WS2812B

Red Vcc WS2812 power supply. Should be a

regulated supply between 5V and 7V.

WS2812 power supply. Should be a

regulated supply between 3.3V and 5V.

Green Data

In/Out

Serial data in/out. Look at arrows and

labels on strip to check which it is.

Serial data in/out. Look at arrows and

labels on strip to check which it is.

Yellow GND Ground. 0V. Ground. 0V.

Each of the wire pigtails are terminated by a three-pin JST SM connector, which you can use to connect string
strips together. For the first strip in a string, you can either connect to a mating connector, or cut and strip the
wires, and connect them to your controlling device. To reuse the rest of the LED strip, check out the LED Strip
pigtail connector to easily connect the cut strips:

Addressable Through-Hole LED

If you require WS2812 LEDs in through-hole form, they are also available as a through-hole package.

LED Strip Pigtail Connector (3-pin)

 CAB-1 4575

Diffused 8mm addressable LEDs connected on a breadboard.

The size of the bulb can either be 8mm or 5mm. The LEDs can be diffused or clear depending on how they were
manufactured.

Diffused 8mm (5 Pack)
Diffused 5mm (5 Pack)
Clear 5mm (5 Pack)

Through-Hole LED Pinout

The datasheet for the WS2812 addressable through-hole LEDs is not clear with the pinout. For reference, you can
refer to the bulb's flat edge and the length of the terminals as indicated below.

Clear Addressable 5mm LED Diffused Addressable 5mm LED

Note: Just like the WS2812 breakout boards, we recommend adding a 0.1 μF capacitor between each
WS2812 LED's VDD and GND.

Hardware Hookup

The great thing about these LEDs is they're super easy to chain together. Plus just one, single pin from your
microcontroller is required to control an entire strip of LEDs. In this example we'll link together five LEDs, but you
should be safe to increase that ten-fold or even more.

Solder/Sew/Wire Something

The first assembly step for each of these products is creating a reliable, electrical connection from the LED to your
control board. You'll need to solder either headers or wires to your breakout boards. Or sew your LilyPad Pixel with
conductive thread. Or strip and splice some wire to connect up the LED strips.

If you're going to stick the boards into a breadboard or other prototyping board, straight male headers might be the
best choice.

The older WS2812 breakouts linked together on a breadboard. Hidden under each is a white wire that connects

DO of one to DI of the next.

If you're going to make a big strip of boards, you may need to opt for the stranded wire route.

Link WS2812-based boards together in a chain, by connecting DIs to DOs (don't forget power too). Sorry, the

fancy green boards aren't available :(.

Select a Power Source

The WS2812 requires about 5V to work. It should operate at anywhere between about 4V to 7V , but 5V is readily­available on most boards. The WS2812B operates between about 3.3V to 5V. The 5V header on an Arduino
board, for example, is a perfect voltage supply for the LEDs.

Also consider how much current your LED strip is going to pull. With every single LED on at full brightness, each
breakout board can pull about 60mA (20mA per channel). Even with just ten breakout boards strung together,
you're looking at upwards of a possible 600mA. Yikes! Below are a few power supplies that can power a few

addressable LEDs. You may need an additional adapter or cable to connect.

If you're stringing together a lot of these things, make sure your power supply can provide the necessary current­umph. If you end up using an external power supply, make sure you connect the power supply ground to your
Arduino ground as well. Here are a few options in our catalog. Make sure to add an additional adapter to your cart
as listed in the recommended products.

Wall Adapter Power Supply - 5.1V DC 2.5A
(USB Micro-B)

 TOL-13831

Wall Adapter Power Supply - 5V DC 2A (Barrel
Jack)

 TOL-12889

USB Wall Charger - 5V, 1A (Black)

 TOL-11456

Mean Well Switching Power Supply - 5VDC,
20A

 TOL-14098

Mean Well LED Switching Power Supply ­5VDC, 8A

 TOL-14602

Connecting an Arduino

This hookup is fairly straightforward. You can power the breakout board(s) using the Arduino's 5V and GND pins.
Then all you need is to pick a free I/O pin to send data to the LED. Let's go with pin 4. To link more breakouts
together, simply connect the output pin of one to the input of the next. Make sure each breakout also gets some
power delivered to it.

Protect your WS2812's!

In addition to the hookup above we recommend the following additions to help you get the most out of your
WS2812-based devices:

Add a Big Smoothing Capacitor

Before connecting the WS2812 to a power source, connect a big capacitor from power to ground. A cap between
100µF and 1000µF should be good.

Mean Well LED Switching Power Supply ­5VDC, 5A

 TOL-14601

This cap will help to smooth out your power supply. The current draw of a WS2812 can vary wildly, and as current
draw grows and shrinks it'll be up to your power source to compensate. The cap will act as a "power reservoir" to
store energy in case the supply dips.

Try to place this cap as close to your WS2812 as possible by placing it in parallel to the Vcc and GND pins.

Add an In-Line Resistor On the Data Signal

Placing a small-ish resistor between your Arduino's data output and the WS2812's data input will help protect the
data pin. A resistor between 220 and 470 Ω should do nicely.

A 330Ω resistor that could be used between the Arduino's I/O pin and the WS2812's data input pin.

Try to place the resistor as close to the WS2812 as possible.

Keep Wires Short!

Wires don't conduct perfectly. They'll inevitably induce some voltage loss, especially when they're really long. Try
to keep wires between your power supply, Arduino, and WS2812 as short as possible to minimize this loss.

Power Large Loads and Daisy Chained LED Strips

For more information on daisy chaining LED strips, check out this section that talks about avoiding voltage drops.

Voltage Drops Along the Daisy Chained LED Strips in Mean Well LED Switching Power Supply Hookup Guide:

Power Large Loads and Daisy Chained LED Strips

Adding Firmware

Note: This example assumes you are using the latest version of the Arduino IDE on your desktop. If this is
your first time using Arduino, please review our tutorial on installing the Arduino IDE. If you have not
previously installed an Arduino library, please check out our installation guide.

For our example code, we'll be making use of Adafruit's fantastic NeoPixel library. Click below to download a copy
of both the example code, as well as the NeoPixel library.

ARDUINO EXAMPLE AND NEOPIXEL LIBRARY (ZIP)

The library is located in the "Adafruit_NeoPixel" folder, and the example code is found in the
"WS2812_Breakout_Example" folder.

With the library installed, open up WS2812_Breakout_Example.ino within Arduino. Before you upload the code,
make sure you adjust the PIN and LED_COUNT definitions near the top of the sketch. These define which pin the
first pixel is connected to, and how many total LEDs are linked up. Then upload away and enjoy the show!

Using the NeoPixel Library

Setup

There are a few lines of code required to set up your sketch to use the library. First, call the constructor near the
top of your code (before setup() , you'll probably want it to be a global variable).

#define PIN 4
#define LED_COUNT 8

// Create an instance of the Adafruit_NeoPixel class called "leds".
// That'll be what we refer to from here on...
Adafruit_NeoPixel leds = Adafruit_NeoPixel(LED_COUNT, PIN, NEO_GRB + NEO_KHZ800);

The PIN and LED_COUNT parameters in that function call should be set, respectively, to the Arduino pin you've
connected to the first breakout's "DIN" pin and the total number of breakout boards you have linked up.

The rest of the setup is calling the leds.begin() function somewhere near the beginning of the setup() function.

Setting An LED

Setting an LED with the Adafruit NeoPixel library is a two step process. First, you have to set a pixel color using
the leds.setPixelColor(position, color) command. The color parameter in that function can either be a 24-bit
RGB color-code, or three separate bytes for each color. For example:

leds.setPixelColor(3, 0xFF00FF); // Set fourth LED to full red, no green, full blue
leds.setPixelColor(3, 0xFF, 0x00, 0xFF) // Also set fourth LED to full red, no green, full blue

Setting a pixel's color does not equate to that pixel actually turning on though. For that, you need to call

leds.show() . Note that when this function is called any LED that was previously set will turn on.

The Rest of the Code

After you've gotten the hang of using the NeoPixel library, the remaining parts of the sketch are finding ways to
maniuplate the pixel colors. There are some fun functions in this example code, which create the classic "cylon"
larson scanner, or draw a rainbow. We hope you can adapt them to make even more creative animations.

The included "WS2812_Definitions.h" file defines a huge list of standard colors. In there you'll find anything from
navy to saddle brown to ghost white.

Have fun!

FastLED Alternative Library

Looking for an alternative library? Try checking out the FastLED library for more advanced features. The library
also supports other LED chipsets.

FASTLED GITHUB REPO

Resources and Going Further

For more information about the WS2812 and WS2812B, check out the resources below:

Breakout Board Schematic (PDF)
Breakout Board Eagle Files (ZIP)
Breakout Board GitHub Repo
Datasheet

WS2812 (PDF)

WS2812B (PDF)

Differences between WS2812 vs WS2812B (PDF)
Example Code and NeoPixel Library (ZIP)
Adafruit NeoPixel Library GitHub Repo
FastLED Library GitHub Repo

Now that you've got the gist of the WS2812 Breakout board, how are you going to use it in a project? Need some
inspiration? Check out these tutorials:

Using OpenSegment -- The OpenSegment is a very large, 4-digit 7-segment display. If you're on a blinky­high after playing with the WS2812 LEDs, this is another fun component to play with.
Getting Started with the LilyPad MP3 Player -- If you're into e-textiles (or even if you're not, this thing is
awesome), check out the LilyPad MP3 Player. Combine the LilyPad MP3 player with the WS2812 to make a
nifty LED-music show.
Designing PCBs: Advanced SMD -- If you'd like to lay out your own, custom PCB for the WS2812 LED/chip,
check out this tutorial. It'll walk you through every step required to design your very own circuit board using
free software. You can use the WS2812 footprint from our parts library to get started.

Building Large LED Installations

Learn what it takes to build large LED installations from
planning to power requirements to execution.

Interactive LED Music Visualizer

Use an Arduino and the SparkFun Sound Detector to
create visualizations on Addressable RGB LED strips.

LED Cloud-Connected Cloud

Make an RGB colored cloud light! You can also control
it from your phone, or hook up to the weather!

Addressable LED Strip Hookup Guide

Add blinking lights to any holiday decoration with our
Holiday Lights Kit using WS2812-based addressable
LEDs!

Check out these projects using the WS2812 addressable LEDs for more ideas:

Mean Well LED Switching Power Supply
Hookup Guide

In this tutorial, we will be connecting a Mean Well LED
switching power supply to an addressable LED strip
controlled by an Arduino.

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