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Adafruit's 24-LED NeoPixel ring, the default ring-light building block

$16.95, 65.5 mm across, one data pin, and the timing caveat that decides which controller you can use.

Open at adafruit.com ↗Adafruit · 3 min

If you are building an RGB ring array over a vessel, this is the part most people start with. The 24-LED NeoPixel ring is 65.5 mm outer diameter, 52.3 mm inner, 3.2 mm thick and 6.5 g. It runs on 5 V, draws roughly 18 mA per LED at full constant current, and chains from a single data pin, so several rings stacked at different heights still need only one output.

The listed price is $16.95, dropping to $15.26 at ten units and $13.56 at a hundred. The 12-LED version is $8.95 if you want a tighter inner ring.

The important limitation is stated plainly: "It cannot be used with a Linux-based microcomputer or interpreted microcontroller". The protocol is timing-critical, so plan on an AVR, RP2040 or similar running at 8 MHz or better, not a Raspberry Pi driving pixels directly from Python.

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