Before we go any further with this project, we need to talk a little bit about power for our DotStar LED strip. DotStar LEDs have a very specific power requirement; if there is not enough power, you will not be able to see them clearly; and if there's too much power, you risk damaging your LEDs. To complicate matters further, we need our power source to be portable in this project, so we will need to make use of batteries of one kind or another. Due to the exacting power requirements of the DotStar LEDs, we will also need to use some electronics to allow our Pi Zero to control DotStar LEDs.
DotStar LEDs are rated as 5V devices. Including a +- 10% tolerance gives us a safe working voltage range of 4.5V to 5.5V to power our DotStar LEDs. Now, you may ask why we don't just use the 5V line from the Pi Zero to power the LED strip? The reason...
