Week 10 Students B¶
This week’s group assignment is to measure the power consumption of an output device. To complete this our group all sat down together and conducted the following experiment with an output. Additionally, we all got to observe the results of our test. Project members: Dariyah Strachan, Dylan Ferro, Ginny Foster, Stuart Christhilf, and David Tian.
Setup¶
For our output device, we chose to use a strip of NeoPixels to test the power consumption. To begin we took a strip of nine neopixels that were soldered together in columns of three and hot glued to cardboard, and we plugged the ground pin of the strip into the ground pin of the breakout SEEED Xiao Rp2040 breakout board that was made during electronics production week. We plugged the data pin into pin 1 of the SEEED Xiao Rp2040, and then we the power pin we connected to the alligator clip of the power supply regulator and measuring device. Next, we uploaded the “simple” Arduino code from the Adafruit NeoPixel library to the NeoPixel strip. Once uploaded the strip began flashing bright green and from there we were good to start tinkering with the voltage being supplied to the NeoPixel strip. To change the voltage we twisted the green knob on the voltage regulator which brought the voltage up or down depending on which way it was turned. We knew not to go above 5 volts as going above might cause harm to either the NeoPixel strip or to the SEED Xiao Rp2040 chip. We manipulated the voltage a few times and what we noticed as a result is described in more detail below.
What We Learned¶
As the lights turned on one by one we watched as the current got progressively larger. This tells us that when programming multiple neopixels, you need to take into consideration how much amperage they will require, or else not all of the neopixels will turn on. We also observed that as we turned the voltage up the brightness of the neopixels also went. We also turned the voltage down and when we did that, the brightness when down. This taught us that it is very important if some of your neopixels are not turning on, to make sure that you have to correct amount of volts and amps for what you are trying to accomplish.
Below is a graph that helps to explain the relationship between current and neopixels:
