The Boden1 - a data line voltage translator

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There are times when you want an easy way to bump a 3.3V logic data signal up to 5V. One case is when you want to use an ESP32/EPS8266 to drive some WS2812 (Neopixel) family of RGB LEDs that operate on 5V. There are a few ways of doing that, but one method is via a SN74LVC1T45DRL IC. It's about the smallest (non BGA) IC I know of that can do this. It's only 1.6mm x 1.2mm in size, with 6 leads - three on each side. The beauty of this IC, is that it can handle the high speed of the WS2812 data requirements.

I made this small PCB as a breakout board that is breadboard-able. I am calling it the Boden1, because it has one data line. There is another version of the IC that can do 2 data lines. Here is the simple schematic:

Boden1-schematic.jpg (23.79 KiB) Viewed 14363 times

The PCB arrived a few days ago, and I made a few of them up. Here is the front and backside of the PCB, showing it plugged into a breadboard for scale:

Boden1_sml.jpg (67.95 KiB) Viewed 14363 times

A shoutout to Steamhead for sponsoring the PCB manufacture and shipping!