I'm following this guide for battery powering some Adafruit NeoPixels. It states that I should put a 1N4001 diode in my circuit to lower the voltage to avoid having too high a voltage and destroying the LED strips.
I tried connecting the +ve terminal of 4 x 1.5V alkaline batteries to one end of the diode and the other end of the diode to the -ve terminal of the batteries to measure the voltage drop and confirm it was about 0.7V (bringing the voltage to around the desired 5.3V). When I did, the diode became very hot very quickly and even started smoking a little. Is this normal?
Also, I'd like to use Lithium batteries for longevity in my final project. The lithium batteries are reading about 1.8V each for a total of about 7.2V across 4. So, in order to get to a reasonable voltage for the LED strips, should I use three diodes connected together in series for a total of a 2.1V drop to bring it down to 5.1V?
// Edit For anyone reading this question later, the solution to the second problem is to use 3 Lithium batteries instead of 4 for 5.2 volts total. No diode even required for a voltage drop since 5.2V is in the perfect range for the NeoPixel strips.