Can the BlinkStick do this?

Hey BlinkStick Forums,

Soon I’m going to be building a very small form factor PC inside of NFC Systems’ S4 Mini case. It’s ~4.7 Liters and doesn’t have a lot of extra room for things like LED controllers or power bricks or what have you.

Because the case has such an open design and my components will be visible, I’d like to make this the first system I include lighting in. I’m trying to find a space-efficient and easy to manipulate RGB lighting solution and I’ve been directed to the BlinkStick from a few users at smallformfactor.net!

I have a few questions about BlinkStick and its available products:

  • Am I able to connect any BlinkStick devices directly to a USB 2.0 header on my motherboard? I’ve got two USB 2.0 headers on my motherboard, which I believe are technically two ports each.
  • If an adapter is needed, is there any way for me to estimate the height in mm of the adapter plus the BlinkStick’s header (and any “rigid” wiring coming out of it)?
  • Can BlinkStick’s software update colors in real-time based off of component thermals?
  • I saw there were some settings for controlling individual lights on an LED (strip?), can individual lights react to component temperatures? (Say, one group of lights near the GPU, another group near the CPU.)
  • Are there any accessory components like power adapters, power connectors, or ‘controller switches’ necessary for the BlinkStick?

Thanks. :smile:

Hello and welcome to the forums,

with a bit soldering/wiring you should be able to connect the BlinkStick (Pro for example) directly to your USB headers. You can use the “build yourself” kit for example. For dimensions and schematics take a look in here:
BlinkStick | Products - BlinkStick Pro (BlinkStick Pro Features)
and here:
https://www.blinkstick.com/files/schematics/blinkstick-pro/blinkstick-pro-v1.0.pdf

The BlinkStick client software itself has no notification for some kind of temperature etc. As already discussed in the forums there is no standard way to get thermal values. So depending on your hardware you can write your own code to get thermal values by WMI, the hardware driver etc.

Additional components like power supply etc. depends on what excactly you want to do (how many LEDs you gonna run). Did you already taken a look at the help section on blinkstick.com?
BlinkStick | BlinkStick Pro and Smart Pixels
This link could help estimating if you need a additional power supply or not.

I hope it helps :smile:

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