Making/Wiring Mono-Pixels

This is a tutorial on how to make a pixel string manually with regular, single-color LEDs instead of 3-color RGB LEDs. It's a rather labor-intensive project but once finished, the result is quite rewarding and along the way, you'll acquire worthwhile knowledge on how pixels work. You'll also acquire much-improved soldering skills!

To get started, let's understand how the pixel driver board works and how to wire it. At 5/16" wide and 1/2" tall, the driver board is quite tiny and consequently can be a bit testy to work with. This is the same driver board that's in most RGB bullet pixels and uses a single WS2811 chip.