NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit NeoPixel 332 LED-per-Meter Silicone Bead LED Strip – 0.5 Meter « Adafruit Industries – Makers, hackers, artists, designers and engineers!

NEW PRODUCT – Adafruit NeoPixel 332 LED-per-Meter Silicone Bead LED Strip – 0.5 Meter

Plug in and glow with this incredible, ultra-high-density NeoPixel strip with an astonishing 332 LEDs/meter. That’s no typo, this half-meter strip has 165 miniature NeoPixels crammed together and coated with a milky silicone bead to give it a smooth and continuous color gradient.

The Adafruit NeoPixel 332 LED-per-Meter Silicone Bead LED Strip is 0.5 meters long and 14mm wide. The strips come on a reel with three 10cm long wires connected to a JST SM 3-pin plug and a 3-pin socket on the other. The wires are even nicely color-coded: black for ground, green for signal, red for 5V DC power. You’ll get SK6812 LEDs on these strips so you don’t need an inline resistor and they work down to 3V logic+power (although they work best at 5V for sure).

NeoPixels are addressable LEDs. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green, and blue components with 8-bit PWM precision (so 24-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten the strip if you like by cutting it. Only 1 digital output pin is required to send data down. The PWM is built into each LED-chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip, and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you.

The strip is made of flexible PCB material and comes in a weatherproof sheathing. You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that is able to drive this strip if you don’t have the LEDs all on white, or really bright. You must use a 3-5V DC power supply to power these strips, do not use higher than 6V or you can destroy the entire strip– yikes!

These LEDs use up to 20 Amps max per meter – this strip is half that length so 10A max. The max rating is assuming all the LEDs are on full white and there’s no voltage droop! That’s not going to be realistic on such a thin flexible PCB – the copper just isn’t thick enough to handle so much current without heating up! So basically don’t set all the LEDs on at full brightness. Usually, the actual current for colorful design is less than 1/3 of the max current. A good power supply is key!

Our detailed NeoPixel Uberguide has everything you need to use NeoPixels in any shape and size. Including ready-to-go library & example code for Arduino compatibles. You can also use these strips with MakeCode or CircuitPython using the NeoPixel software support.