Underglow

VEX V5 General Discussion Technical Discussion
#1

I’ve been thinking about putting lights (most likely LED’s) on my robot for a while now. I saw a few teams doing it and was wondering how I can do it legally. After looking at some other threads, I saw that it’s legal to do it as long as the power source is the robot itself. How do I do this using the V5 brain? Does it use legacy ports, or could I use smart ports?

#2

Get LED strips that are USB powered with a male USB connection, and buy a female USB cord as well. Cut the female USB cord and strip the red and black of the wire, then solder the red and black of the wire on the female USB cord to a two-wire extension cable sold by VEX. Connect the two-wire extension cable to the back two holes of one of the plugs on the VEX Brain, and connect the LED’s to the Female USB wire and the LED’s should turn on without any need of coding or external power supply(since external power supply’s are illegal). Hopefully this makes sense :smiley:

3 Likes
#3

@Connor, Thank you so much for the tip.

#4

Could you just go straight from male to 2-wire instead of using the extra female cable?

#5

You can. I think the point of @Connor’s method is to keep the USB connector intact in case you wish to use the strip later with USB.

2 Likes
#6

thanks, that makes sense

#7

Yes, that is partially the reason but because I once broke an LED strip with heavy defense I just need to unplug and replug a new strip in without much effort. I bought 3 strips, each costing around $6 and are incredibly bright, cheap, and efficient on power. So if one breaks, I simply replace the strips with a new one :slight_smile:

#8

do you have a link for the one you bought? It would be much appreciated.

#9

The ones I bought were from here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XBY86BR
The thread that I used to get them from is here: Strip LED V5
You don’t need a motor controller and/or a tester, just connect and apply and you’re good to go :ok_hand:

#11

thanks so much for the help

#12

My school’s Z team had to remove their LEDs at state because they didn’t know they weren’t allowed an external power source so that was a bummer, could possibly be the reason they preformed so poorly :thinking: :thinking: :thinking:. Thanks for the thread and for the advice boutta flex on them next season,

#13