More Mote information

Discussion Raspberry Pi
1

I have some mote pHATs as well as the USB controller, along with cables and strips.
Now I have in mind a project which means I need LEDs which are not in fixed space strips.

Lucky me, I have APA102s, so I’d like to connect them to a Zero with a Mote pHAT.
The connectors on the pHAT look like micro USB ones, so I have two questions.

  1. Are they uUSB, and if not, where could I obtain plugs of that type?
  2. What is the pinout? Obviously, I need to get 5v and VCC right, as well as DIN.

I would want to drive around 10 LEDs per channel, and have a beefy enough 5V supply, as I have been able to drive all four strips fully on (bright white) and had a stable system.

/Steve

2

The Pinout for Mote’s lighting ports is here: http://docs.pimoroni.com/mote/#lighting-ports

They are standard microUSB connectors, you can get a (female) connector on breakout from us: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/sparkfun-microb-usb-breakout - however you’d also need a Mote cable to connect it.

Alternatively, you can user the cheaper/hackier method; use one of our Mote cables and just snip it in half. The wires are colour coded and big enough to solder into a project- I often use snipped up USB cables for prototyping and testing.

If you use a breakout, the ID pin is unused, VCC and GND are as standard and D+ and D- are Clock and Data respectively.

Inside the cable the red wire is VCC, the black wire is GND (as you might have guessed) and the green and white wires are D+/Clock and D-/Data respectively.

A quick google yields:

To summarize:

  • Black - Ground
  • NC (ID pin)
  • White - D+ - Clock
  • Green - D- - Data
  • Red - Vcc
1 Like
3

Awesome, exactly what I needed.
I did read this just after you posted it, but I have only just managed to reply - sorry.

/Steve