CJMCU 8x8 WS2812 Addressable LED Array with an Arduino

Someone asked me why I did not include addressable LED arrays in mt book "Arduino LED Projects".  Well basically back them I did not know about addressable LED's.  SO recently a friend wanted some LED effects at his wedding reception so I started looking into addressable LED's.  The first thing I bought was a 8x8 LED array.  I connected it up and loaded Adafruit's NeoPixel software into the Arduino and got NOTHING!

Then someplace I read that the Data in and Data out labels are swapped.  So, to get it to work connect the D out pin to the Arduino D6 pin.  It came to LIFE!  Then after about a minute smoke rose out of the Arduino.  The voltage regulator had gone up in smoke.  Find an 5 volt 1-2 amp AC adapter and use that to power the LED array.

Here is a picture of it running the Adafruit demo.

This is the back view showing how to connect it to the Arduino and to power.

This is the video of the demo.