Light Strips for the micro:bit

Kitronik produce and sell a number of light strips for the micro:bit called Zip

https://www.kitronik.co.uk/catalogsearch/result/?cat=0&q=zip

Huddersfield Girls Geeks chose a selection of the Arc and the Circle Zips with 12 lights for a headdress workshop.

Here are some steps for connecting and coding these lightstrips.

Connecting the Zips to the micro:bit

Solder the Zip

1. You need to solder pins onto the Arc and the Circle. On the Arc you need to solder lights onto the end that says DIN for Data In
   

   The pins are pointing the wrong way! Solder the short side to the Arc

2. So we’re going to add a jumper wire from the pins to the micro:bit. If you want you could use an edge connector attached to the micro:bit and use a female to female jumper wire. I didn’t want that extra weight.

Attaching the micro:bit lightweight version

1. I stripped 3 male to female jumper wire, stripping the male dupont off and crimping it to an M4 ring terminal
   

   Male to female jumper

   

   

   Bend out this piece of plastic

   

   Pull off the dupont

   

   Crimp a ring terminal on

   

   Do it 3 times

   Using 4mm countersunk screws and nuts attach the 3 wires to the micro:bit at Pin 0, 3V and GND like so. The nuts are secured on the back of the micro:bit. The screws are only 12mm long. 

2. Attach the micro:bit to the Arc or Circle
   1. Pin 0 goes to DIN
   2. 3V goes to 5VDC
   3. GND to either of the GND
3. Light it up! Using the Neopixel library on the micro:bit you can now control the LEDs on the Zip
   

   

    

Quick Code

Some simple code: (after you select Advanced > Add Package > Neopixel) I recommend dimming the brightness as these lights are REALLY bright.

To create this circle select Variables > Create New Variable

To set brightness select Neopixel then More… in the menu

Chaining several Zips together

1. You can chain Arcs together by soldering the other end DOUT and chaining another one on using female to female jumper wires. (In the picture below I’m using the 2xAAA battery pack that comes with the micro:bit. This won’t last very long with this setup)

Adding two circles

There is no DOUT on the circle, so you can’t chain circles together. However, you can have a circle and an arc or 2 circles by adding another 3 terminal rings to Pin 1, 3V and GND. I added the ring terminals to the back of 3V and GND. It’s a tight fit, but it works!

 

Coding two Circle

• The code is different. You need to create another variable for the other set of lights
  

  Shopping list

• The screws: http://cpc.farnell.com/unbranded/cp4m12/screw-csk-pozi-4m-x-12mm-100pk/dp/FNCP4M12
• The nuts: http://cpc.farnell.com/unbranded/m4-stainless-full-nu/m4-stainless-full-nut/dp/FN00777
• The ring terminals: http://cpc.farnell.com/pro-power/st1-4-0/ring-terminal-red-4-0mm-25a-100/dp/CN11351
• Female to Male jumper wires
• Pins

Coming soon! Pictures from the Huddersfield Girl Geek day. For now here’s a video of me wearing 2 circles!

These are @Kitronik Zip circles controlled by a #microbit Practising for @HuddsGirlGeeks next weekend @microbit_edu pic.twitter.com/kEDs5yxd6u

— Lorraine Underwood (@LMcUnderwood) May 12, 2018

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