This Raspberry Pi shield is designed with LED prototyping in mind. We love building with Neopixels and needed a tool that was easy to use.It attaches to the GPIO pins of your RPi and acts as a WS281X Bridge between your dreams and the LED's of your choice. The shield allows us to streamline our led ideas without the need of a breadboard, cobbler setup and extra wires.

• Supports Raspbbery Pi A, B/B+, 2, 3 and Zero, Zero W!
• Works with WS2811 / WS2812 LED's and Neopixels (strips too)
• 3 and 4 pin Molex slots for swapping out your LED's
• Based off 74hCT125N
• 100uf capacitor to protect against surges while powering
• Inspired by Neopixels and Fadecandy.

Check out our full guide here! https://github.com/areaofeffect/rpi-led-shield

FAQ

How many LED's can this drive?

You can drive (almost!) as many led's as you have power for with our shield. Do you plan on using LED strips with your project? We can help you calculate how much power you might need.

To calculate amperage for your power supply, a good rule of thumb is each that LED draws 60 mA at maximum brightness. You can then divide by 1,000 for a safe estimate.

60 NeoPixels × 60 mA ÷ 1,000 = 3.6 Amps minimum

For most LED's, make sure it's 5 volts.

If you need more info on power, Adafruit has a great guide here: https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-neopixel-uberguide/power1

Can I power this without an external power supply?

For v3 of our board an external 5v power supply is needed. We did this to protect your Pi from surges when many LED's are plugged in.

If you're feeling hacker-style you can jump the power from the 5v rail on the Pi to the LED's. Not recommended but will certainly work!