Hello,
I'm Brian, and I'm on a Vex robotics team at my school. This year our robot is doing very well, and we have some time before our regional championship to make some small additions to the robot. One of the things we've been talking about since the beginning of the season is adding strip LED's onto our robot. I've looked through the Vex forms and many places online to no avail. The sensor output from our robot is 5V. I am not allowed to hoop up an external power supply to our robot due to the rules of the competition. I was thinking about making a transformer, but I am not sure that is the best course of action,(especially as I don't know if they are allowed on our robots). If nothing else, I could splice one of our power expander cables on our robot that powers it, but I could not control the colors of the LED that way.
Thanks,
BRIAN*

 

Ok. New bro speech about LED:
1. LED is a diode.
2. To turn diode ON, you need voltage. Red LED needs 1.8-2.2 volts to turn ON. You have 5 volts so you will have no trouble of turning ON LED of variety of colors.
3. The brightness of LED is controlled by the current. So. How much current can you source from your 5 volt source?

 

Hello,
I'm Brian, and I'm on a Vex robotics team at my school. This year our robot is doing very well, and we have some time before our regional championship to make some small additions to the robot. One of the things we've been talking about since the beginning of the season is adding strip LED's onto our robot. I've looked through the Vex forms and many places online to no avail. The sensor output from our robot is 5V. I am not allowed to hoop up an external power supply to our robot due to the rules of the competition. I was thinking about making a transformer, but I am not sure that is the best course of action,(especially as I don't know if they are allowed on our robots). If nothing else, I could splice one of our power expander cables on our robot that powers it, but I could not control the colors of the LED that way.
Thanks,
BRIAN*

The strip requires 12 V? How much current?
Do you already have a 12 V source on the robot? How much current can it supply compared to what is normally needed?
VEX Cortex?

 

They will likely need buck-boost converter.