Hi This is pretty basic question, but I just wanted to make sure I don’t blow anything up.
I’ve meant to get a 220V AC to 5V DC regulator thing (ali express, I was ordering a few other things and threw it in on a whim, you can’t have too many 5v power supplies) before wiring it up to a pico I tested it and it’s putting out 10V 
. I checked that open circuit and also with a resistor as load.
My plan is to use run a pico and 16 neopixles running on a colour cycling loop above the water tank in my coffee machine, to make the level easier to see and be pretty.
Would it be safe to just have a voltage divider, something like this? I also figure the actual values of the resistors aren’t too important, as long as they are the same.
Hi Doug,
At a most basic level, you have a 200ohm, R Pi Pico and Neopixel in parallel, so it is not a 50:50 volage divider that will give you 5V, it will be lower.
A simple option is a small buck converter like this: dc-dc buck converter with 3.3 and 5V options.
Cheers, Dave
Hi Doug
If it is supposed to be 5V and it is actually 10V I would chuck it in the bin of no return. no good asking what the current capability is. If the voltage is that far out I would never believe anything else.
The nutshell is, if it is 100% out at the start what is it going to do down the track a bit. You might destroy all of your connected devices if it suddenly does something like revert to 220VAC output for no apparent reason.
Would suggest use it at your peril.
Cheers Bob
Of course 
I didn’t think about the resistance etc of the pi and pixles
Probably the best advice. 10V isn’t even one of the options for output of the 3 I could choose from (3.3, 5. 12) so it’s probably faulty. Thanks
2 Likes
