Speeding up LPD8806 show() without hardware SPI @ Michael Noland’s Blog.

Hi, I made a method to update LPD8806 strips about 5x faster than the current library on GitHub. It’s about the same speed as the hardware SPI implementation, but can be used when those pins are dedicated to other hardware (e.g., Ethernet boards).

It requires that the clock and data pin assignments are known at sketch.

If you’re using LPD8806 LED strips and you can’t use the hardware SPI port (e.g., when using an Ethernet board), there are two other options in the Adafruit library: the default mode and ‘slowmo’ mode. The default mode is decent, but the flexibility of being able to choose the pins at runtime comes with a cost. However, you can still get a decent speedup by defining your pin usage at compile time in a replacement show() function.

This tutorial is interesting because its the first time we’ve seen the use of compile-time templates to set interface pins via a sketch. Traditionally, Arduino users use digitalWrite() or digitalRead() to interface with the pin registers. Hardk0re hackers sometimes like to use pointers to the registers which still allows for flexible pin numbering in the sketch but this technique takes it to the next level!

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip. These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you

Built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel – that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it. The best part is that compared to the WS2801 which can only run one LED at a time, this chip can drive 2 RGB LEDs which means the price stays the same as the older HL1606 strip, nice!

The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a waterproof sheathing.

You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5″/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use)

They come in 5 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip!

Adafruit SSD1306 running at over 500 hz frame rate. Greg writes -

Final driver tweeks have raised the frame rate to over 500 hz with the same graphic load. Again, a great display!  Thanks very much for your products. They are fun to incorporate into our designs.

The display is being updated at over 500 hz as can be determined by the on screen counter (it counts from o through 999 then resets) and by the oscilloscope frequency display (it is reading 553.1 hz). The driver is optimized for the display, however, it is ready to drive the 128 by 64 version of the display when it becomes available. The PIC24FJ64GB002 is running at 16mhz. The spi bit rate is 8mhz. The drivers are written in C. No assembly language was required.

Monochrome 128×32 OLED graphic display. These displays are small, only about 1″ diagonal, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×32 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness!

The driver chip SSD1306, communicates via SPI only. 4 or 5 pins are required to communicate with the chip in the OLED display.

The OLED and driver require a 3.3V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. To make it easier for our customers to use, we’ve added a 3.3v regulator and level shifter on board! This makes it compatible with any 5V microcontroller, such as the Arduino.

The power requirements depend a little on how much of the display is lit but on average the display uses about 20mA from the 3.3V supply. Built into the OLED driver is a simple switch-cap charge pump that turns 3.3v-5v into a high voltage drive for the OLEDs, making it one of the easiest ways to get an OLED into your project!

Of course, we wouldn’t leave you with a datasheet and a “good luck”: We have a detailed tutorial and example code in the form of an Arduino library for text and graphics. You’ll need a microcontroller with more than 512 bytes of RAM since the display must be buffered.

You can download our SSD1306 OLED display Arduino library from github which comes with example code. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 512 bytes of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.

Dimensions:

• PCB: 32mm x 23mm
• Display area: 25mm x 7mm
• Thickness: 4mm

Display details:

• Diagonal Screen Size：0.91″
• Number of Pixels：128 × 32
• Color Depth：Monochrome (White)
• Module Construction：COG
• Module Size (mm)：46.30× 11.50 × 1.45
• Panel Size (mm)：30.00 × 11.50 × 1.45
• Active Area (mm)：22.384 × 5.584
• Pixel Pitch (mm)：0.175 × 0.175
• Pixel Size (mm)：0.159 × 0.159
• Duty：1/32
• Brightness ( cd/m2)：150 (Typ) @ 7.25V
• Interface：4-wire SPI

In stock and shipping now!

Office Bling By DairDair

Our offices have these little peek-a-boo sections in the frosted glass. Some people stick post-it notes up describing what’s going on with them, but I wanted something more complex. I had recently picked up the Adafruit “RGB backlight negative LCD” display and was evaluating the X-Bee radios and decided to make an “almost wireless” LCD display for the front of my office. It’s not very complex – using a Boarduino (Arduino) running a little sketch that has a few modes – static text, alternating text describing what I’m working on, plus a mode that cycles through a bunch of “Burma Shave” four-liners just for silliness. The modes and backlight color are controlled from my PC via the other X-Bee. People seem to like it, so I’ll probably commit it to a perf-board and get rid of all those ugly wires.

RGB backlight positive LCD 20×4 + extras [black on RGB]. To match our popular 16×2 RGB Character LCDs (http://www.adafruit.com/products/399 & http://www.adafruit.com/products/398) we’ve now added 20×4 LCDs! Get more text, with an RGB backlight. Both positive and negative type! This is a fancy upgrade to standard 20×4 LCDs, instead of just having blue and white, or red and black, this LCD has black characters on a full color RGB background! That means you can change the display background color to anything you want – red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse. This LCD looks strikingly good in person. This LCD is the most daylight readable character LCD we have and is very beautiful and easy to read no matter what color/brightness you have for the backlight.

One nice thing about these LCDs is that they are an elegant upgrade, but you can use them in existing LCD projects and they’ll still work – just that only the red LED will be used (so it will appear black-on-red). The extra two pins (17 and 18) are for the green and blue LEDs. The LCD has resistors on board already so that you can drive it with 5V logic and the current draw will be ~40mA per LED (there are two LEDs, 20mA each). There’s a single LED backlight for the entire display, the image above showing 3 colors at once is a composite!

Comes with a single 20×4 RGB backlight LCD, 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header. Our tutorials and diagrams will have you up and running in no time!

In stock and shipping now.

Quick project: ambient temperature display using Adafruit RGB LCD via the Adafruit customer forums… ogrodnek writes -

I wanted to share a quick project using one of the adafruit RGB LCDs. It’s an ambient temperature display — it displays the current temperature and will adjust the LCD backlight color depending on where it falls. It’s a really simple project — just wire up the LCD and a temperature sensor. There’s more info, a video, and the source code here. thanks!

RGB backlight positive LCD 16×2 + extras, black on RGB. This is a fancy upgrade to standard 16×2 LCDs, instead of just having blue and white, or red and black, this LCD has black characters on a full color RGB-backlight background! That means you can change the background color to anything you want – red, green, blue, pink, white, purple yellow, teal, salmon, chartreuse, or just leave it off for a neutral background. This LCD is the most daylight readable character LCD we have.

We had these custom made to our specification so that you can use them in existing LCD projects and they’ll still work – just that only the red LED will be used. The extra two pins (17 and 18) are for the green and blue LEDs. The LCD has resistors on board already so that you can drive it with 5V logic and the current draw will be ~20mA per LED. There’s a single LED backlight for the entire display, the image above showing 3 colors at once is a composite!

Comes with a single 16×2 RGB backlight LCD, 10K necessary contrast potentiometer and strip of header. Our tutorials and diagrams will have you up and running in no time!

In stock and shipping now.

Interactive LED Tree at TEDxMaui. Jerry writes -

The interactive LED thing I showed last week on the Show & Tell was a shown at TEDxMaui on sunday…. yeah I was up till 2am working on code.  The blog post is pretty thin on tech for the build but the flickr set shows the parts and some detail. When I recover from the build up to TEDx I’ll do a better writeup… then again, I need to enter a new build mode to get the weather proof, improved interaction version built for Source Maui – our local burning man inspired event. That one requires 15 meters of tape, more/better interactivity and waterproofing. Probably battery power too. Thanks for great work and inspiration adafruit!

NEW PRODUCT – 36mm Square 12V Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 20) [WS2801]. RGB Pixels are digitally-controllable lights you can set to any color, or animate. Each metal ‘pixel square’ contains 4 RGB LEDs and a controller chip soldered to a PCB. The pixel is then ‘flooded’ with epoxy to make it waterproof. These are fairly large pixels but they have a lot of nice mounting options, such as two metal flanges on the side and a 0.15″/4mm diameter hole in the middle so you can screw them directly onto a surface. They’re typically used to make outdoor signs. Compared to our other LED dots, these are much bigger and much brighter, good for larger scale installations.

The pixels are connected by a 4-conductor cable. +12VDC, ground, data and clock. Data is shifted down from one pixel to the next so that you can easily cut the strand or attach more onto the end.

Each dot is digitally controlled, with an internal 8-bit PWM LED driver (24-bit color for 16 million different shades). The pixels must be clocked by a microcontroller, we have an example code linked below that works on an Arduino, it should be simple to adapt it to any other microcontroller.

The pixels use 4 x 5050 RGB LEDs, with a 120 degree beam width. The total max brightness of all LEDs is about 6000mcd. (Please note: mcd ratings of LEDs are notoriously inflated by most LED sellers, so be extra-skeptical when reviewing LED ratings!)

Sold by the strand, each strand has 20 pixels in series! Each strand has two JST SM 3-pin connectors so you can connect multiple strands in a row, as many as you wish, just watch for how much current they want. The two power wires are brought out separately to make wiring easier, a 2.1mm terminal block adapter is handy here to attach a DC power supply. We have a 12V/5A supply that should be able to drive 2 or more strands (depending on current use). The LEDs are constant-current driven so you’ll have even colors through-out the strand as long as you have a stable 12V supply

You can drive these with an Arduino using any two microcontroller digital pins, check this library which also has example code to demonstrate the strands and be sure to read our very detailed tutorial on usage!

• 36mmx36mm squares (1.4″) 5mm deep (0.2″)
• 75mm / 3″ apart on the strand
• 20 pieces per strand
• These pixels use a WS2801 chip for full 24 bit color, constant-current drive
• 12VDC power, 120mA maximum per pixel (LED on full white)
• 2-pin SPI-like protocol
• WS2801 Datasheet for the chip inside each pixel
• Brightness per pixel: 6000 mcd combined (we’ll try to get a datasheet for the LEDs)

In stock, blinky blinking now!

Comes in a strip of 10 pieces. If you order more than one strip, it will come as multiple strips of 10, not one long strip.

Please note this is a surface mount part! it is possible to solder thin wires to the pads but its designed for use on a SMT PCB. We do have an Eagle package for this LED in our github library repository, called RGBLED5050 that you can use in your next PCB design.

• Vf: 3.0 – 3.2V
• Color Temperature: 6500-7000K
• Brightness: 18-20 Lumens
• Recommended Current drive: 55-60mA for all three LEDs (18-20mA each)

In stock and shipping now!

NEW PRODUCT – Diffused 5mm Fast Flashing RGB LED – 10 pack [Flashing Effect]. These are very interesting 5mm diffused RGB LEDs – instead of having 4 pins to control 3 LEDs, they have only two leads – power and ground. When powered, the LEDs perform a flashing effect with all the colors. See the video below for the timing and look. There is no way to change the ‘program’ or rate, its burned into a little chip that is inside the LED itself. If you need to have an RGB perform a particular arrangement, check out our RGB LEDs that you can easily control with a microcontroller We also have a version that’s a ‘slow fading’ RGB color cycle.

They’re fairly bright LEDs, we guess its something around 1000 mcd total. They do diffuse nicely so you can the color changing from any angle. The forward voltage of the whole LED is about 3.4VDC but you can drive them from a lithium coin cell like a CR2032 and they’ll just be a little dimmer. We don’t have a datasheet showing the current draw over different voltages and colors but at the ‘rated’ 3.4V its approx 20 mA and at 3.0V its approx 10mA.

• 5mm diffused RGB LED
• Two leads
• Power with 3-3.4VDC
• Current draw: 10-20mA depending on voltage and displayed color

Comes in a pack of 10 LEDs! Although the LEDs are all the same shape and have the same basic program, due to manufacturing variables they will not sync together – they’ll slowly drift in and out of sync.

In stock and blinking now.

NEW PRODUCT – Diffused 5mm Slow Fade Flashing RGB LED – 10 pack [Slow fade]. These are very interesting 5mm diffused RGB LEDs – instead of having 4 pins to control 3 LEDs, they have only two leads – power and ground. When powered, the LEDs perform a slow fade through the rainbow, from red to orange to yellow, etc till they get back to red. See the video below for the timing and look. There is no way to change the ‘program’ or rate, its burned into a little chip that is inside the LED itself. If you need to have an RGB perform a particular arrangement, check out our RGB LEDs that you can easily control with a microcontroller We also have a version that’s an exciting RGB flashing pattern

They’re fairly bright LEDs, we guess its something around 1000 mcd total. They do diffuse nicely so you can the color changing from any angle. The forward voltage of the whole LED is about 3.4VDC but you can drive them from a lithium coin cell like a CR2032 and they’ll just be a little dimmer. We don’t have a datasheet showing the current draw over different voltages and colors but at the ‘rated’ 3.4V its approx 20 mA and at 3.0V its approx 10mA.

• 5mm diffused RGB LED
• Two leads
• Power with 3-3.4VDC
• Current draw: 10-20mA depending on voltage and displayed color

Comes in a pack of 10 LEDs! Although the LEDs are all the same shape and have the same basic program, due to manufacturing variables they will not sync together – they’ll slowly drift in and out of sync.

In stock, shippin’ now!

NEW PRODUCT – RF Touch Wheel Controller for Analog RGB LED Strips. This touch controller set is a quick and easy way to control a bunch of our 12V analog RGB LED strip. The box part contains power driver circuitry and an RF receiver. The handheld remote contains a capacitive touch interface and an RF transmitter. By wiring the analog strip to the box you can easily adjust the color from across the room. Since it it is RF you don’t need line-of-sight like you would with an IR Remote.

The box has a few ‘programs’ built in, such as rainbow fading and a really obnoxious colorful blinking effect. However, you’ll probably end up being very happy with the basic control system that the remote allows. You can turn it on or off by pressing the power button, change the brightness by pressing B+ or B- and select the color using the scrolling color wheel.

This package contains just the controller box and remote. You’ll likely want to pick up a few other items to complete the project:

• AAA batteries, the RF remote requires 3 and they are not included
• 4-pin euro terminal block allows connecting the LED strip without soldering
• 12V 5A power adapter is perfect for driving any of our LED strips! It can drive up to 5 meters of the 60 LED/meter strip
• JST Plugs and JST Receptacles – for quick connecting LED strip segments.
• 2.1mm barrel jack adapter will let you solderlessly connect the 12V power adapter to the RGB controller box.
• LED strips! You can use this with our 60 LED/meter RGB, 30 LED/meter RGB or 60 LED/meter warm white.

Technical Details:

• Working temperature: -20 to 60°C
• Control Box Dimensions: 89mmx70mmx28mm
• Strip power voltage: 12-24VDC
• 3 Channel output, 4 Amps per channel (12 Amps total)
• For common anode LED strips
• RF Touch remote: 25 meter distance
• 100 brightness levels
• 64 Color selectable wheel

In stock and shipping now.

UPDATED TUTORIAL: Monochrome OLED 128×64 & 128×32 display tutorial, we now include wiring diagrams for our 128×32 OLED display!

NEW PRODUCT – Monochrome 128×32 OLED graphic display. These displays are small, only about 1″ diagonal, but very readable due to the high contrast of an OLED display. This display is made of 128×32 individual white OLED pixels, each one is turned on or off by the controller chip. Because the display makes its own light, no backlight is required. This reduces the power required to run the OLED and is why the display has such high contrast; we really like this miniature display for its crispness!

The driver chip SSD1306, communicates via SPI only. 4 or 5 pins are required to communicate with the chip in the OLED display.

The OLED and driver require a 3.3V power supply and 3.3V logic levels for communication. To make it easier for our customers to use, we’ve added a 3.3v regulator and level shifter on board! This makes it compatible with any 5V microcontroller, such as the Arduino.

The power requirements depend a little on how much of the display is lit but on average the display uses about 20mA from the 3.3V supply. Built into the OLED driver is a simple switch-cap charge pump that turns 3.3v-5v into a high voltage drive for the OLEDs, making it one of the easiest ways to get an OLED into your project!

Of course, we wouldn’t leave you with a datasheet and a “good luck”: We have a detailed tutorial and example code in the form of an Arduino library for text and graphics. You’ll need a microcontroller with more than 512 bytes of RAM since the display must be buffered.

You can download our SSD1306 OLED display Arduino library from github which comes with example code. The library can print text, bitmaps, pixels, rectangles, circles and lines. It uses 512 bytes of RAM since it needs to buffer the entire display but its very fast! The code is simple to adapt to any other microcontroller.

Dimensions:

• PCB: 32mm x 23mm
• Display area: 25mm x 7mm
• Thickness: 4mm

Display details:

• Diagonal Screen Size：0.91″
• Number of Pixels：128 × 32
• Color Depth：Monochrome (White)
• Module Construction：COG
• Module Size (mm)：46.30× 11.50 × 1.45
• Panel Size (mm)：30.00 × 11.50 × 1.45
• Active Area (mm)：22.384 × 5.584
• Pixel Pitch (mm)：0.175 × 0.175
• Pixel Size (mm)：0.159 × 0.159
• Duty：1/32
• Brightness ( cd/m2)：150 (Typ) @ 7.25V
• Interface：4-wire SPI

In stock and shipping now!

LED belt kit (video) from Adafruit customer phnxfirestorm!

Digital programmable LED belt kit. By popular demand, we now have a project tutorial for how to make your own programmable, ultra-blinky LED belt. Perfect for parties, raves, parades, weddings, funerals, and bar mitzvahs. Wear it with pride, wear it with blinky! Follow our soldering tutorial to build your own heirloom LED belt, and hand it down to your grandkids.

We designed this project to demonstrate how to use the digital LED strip, how to use our Atmega32u4 breakout board with the Arduino IDE and how to make a portable battery powered project that runs off of AAs. This project is not too difficult, and can be finished in a day. Some soldering experience is good since ‘free wire’ soldering is a little more difficult than soldering to a PCB, but even beginners should be able to manage. We don’t include a tutorial on using the Arduino IDE so its good if you’ve played around with the Arduino already.

The pack contains the following:

• Atmega32u4 breakout board (the brains!)
• Digital LED strip – 1 meter
• 6-pin IDC cable
• Inline cable pair (male and female)
• 4xAA battery holder with a switch
• 1N4001 diode
• 3″ of 3/32″ heatshrink
• 2″ of 1″ heatshrink
• Zip/cable tie

You’ll need some very common electronics tools to make this project:

• A soldering iron and solder
• Wire cutters and wire stripper (or a tool that does both)
• Heat source like a heat gun, hairdryer, or lighter
• Any kind of pliers
• A 3rd hand tool or panavise or some other way to keep your work steady
• A basic multimeter can be handy

You’ll also few more things to complete and power the project: a very common mini-B USB cable (for programming the belt) and 4 AA batteries for powering it. You can use alkaline or rechargeables. The belt will last for 6-12 hours depending on what designs you program in – more LEDs will drain the batteries faster.

Be sure to see the full detailed tutorial over at the project page In stock and shipping now!

RGB LED strips: an overview @ Nut & Bolt. David writes -

An addressable RGB LED strip is like a one pixel high color screen. You can do awesome things with them: crazy lighting effects, information displays and even low resolution video. There are many different types of RGB LED strips on the market. Here is an overview of addressable led strips I evaluated for Stripe. I’ll tell you a bit about different controller chips, electrical specifications and software libraries to help you make a choice.

In this detailed report on digital RGB LED strips, our LPD8806-based strip came out on top as a ‘a nice balance between features and cost’. We spent many months looking for the best digital LED strip and we love the kind we stock.

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip. These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you

Built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel – that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it. The best part is that compared to the WS2801 which can only run one LED at a time, this chip can drive 2 RGB LEDs which means the price stays the same as the older HL1606 strip, nice!

The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a waterproof sheathing.

You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5″/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use)

They come in 5 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip!

LED screen teardown, driving LEDs with video, mikeselectricstuff writes -

I just took apart a piece of the commercial outdoor LED screen that used to be in London’s Piccadilly Circus. Also included is a detailed analysis of the drive waveforms etc. which may be of interest to people trying to seriously use the 32×16 RGB modules

We carry 32×16 and 32×32 LED wall sections in the shop! Complete with Arduino wiring diagrams and libraries.

32×32 RGB LED matrix panel! Bring a little bit of Times Square into your home with this totally adorable 5 inch square 32 x 32 RGB LED matrix panel. These panels are normally used to make video walls, here in New York we see them on the sides of busses and bus stops, to display animations or short video clips. We thought they looked really cool so we picked up a few boxes of them from a factory. They have 1024 bright RGB LEDs arranged in a 32×32 grid on the front. On the back there is a PCB with two sets of dual IDC connectors (two input, two output: in theory you can chain these together) and 12 16-bit latches that allow you to drive the display with a 1:16 scan rate.

These displays are ‘chainable’ – connect one output to the next input – but our Arduino example code does not support this (yet). It requires a high speed processor and more RAM than the Arduino has!

These panels require 13 digital pins (6 bit data, 7 bit control) and a good 5V supply, up to 2A per panel. We suggest our 2A regulated 5V adapter and then connecting a 2.1mm jack Please check out our tutorial for more details!

Comes with: a single 32×32 RGB panel, two IDC cables, a power cable, 4 mounting screws and mini-magnets (it appears these are often mounted on a magnetic base)

Keep in mind that these displays are designed to be driven by FPGAs or other high speed processors: they do not have built in PWM control of any kind. Instead, you’re supposed to redraw the screen over and over to ‘manually’ PWM the whole thing. On a 16 MHz arduino, we managed to squeeze 12-bit color (4096 colors) with 40% CPU usage but this display would really shine if driven by any FPGA, CPLD, Propeller, XMOS or other high speed multi-core controller. The good news is that the display is pre-white balanced with nice uniformity so if you turn on all the LEDs its not a particularly tinted white.

Of course, we wouldn’t leave you with a datasheet and a “good luck!” We have a full wiring diagrams and working Arduino library code with examples from drawing pixels, lines, rectangles, circles and text. You’ll get your color blasting within the hour! On an Arduino, you’ll need 13 digital pins, and about 1600 bytes of RAM to buffer the 12-bit color image. At this time we do not have wiring documentation for the MEGA.

In stock and shipping now!

Enclosure for @adafruit SSD1306 OLED display. Nice!

therainbowmachine.com via Hack a Day.

The display consists of addressable RGB LED strips and an Arduino from Adafruit, along with the associated support mechanisms for moving the LEDs. The real magic is carried out by the LPD8806 light painting library, also from Adafruit, which enables the RainBroz to create all sorts of images with little fuss.

Interactive Drumming Light Display using the Adafruit LPD8806 LED Strip… cjbaar writes -

For my lights display this year, I programmed an Arduino to control a 160-LED strip from Adafruit (using the LPD8806 driver). These strips are a lot of fun to work with, because you can individually set the color value for each LED on the strip.

To add some interactivity, I wired up an old, stripped-down rock band drum set… and created four interactive patterns based on the four drum colors. In some of the modes, you can “mix” colors by hitting two drum heads simultaneously. To complete the effect, the Arduino sends MIDI messages to an old drum machine to add sound.

I had to fully trim down the light input on the camera, to avoid the LEDs completely washing out the sensor, so all you can see is the strip and not the house. In one of the lower angles, you can see the house and strip in the background.

In the video, I cycle through each of the four programs and play for about 30 seconds.

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip. These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you

Built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel – that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it. The best part is that compared to the WS2801 which can only run one LED at a time, this chip can drive 2 RGB LEDs which means the price stays the same as the older HL1606 strip, nice!

The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a waterproof sheathing.

You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5″/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use)

They come in 5 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.

Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip!

DISCO! We hope you enjoyed the over-the-top X2 Time Ball video as much as we enjoyed making it! Getting this finished in time for New Year’s Eve meant the progress blog posts would have to wait, so we’ll be returning to a few details now after the fact, and continuing as future design plans are ironed out…

As explained in an earlier post, we settled on an icosahedron shape as a sanity-preserving measure. Every single LED — 120 of them — must be installed in a specific sequence, and using a higher-order polyhedron would require following a very complex map for their locations. The icosahedron is simpler with 20 identical triangular faces, and the same wiring sequence from one to the next (with alternate rows rotated 180 degrees):

This is just the installation order for the LEDs; wiring for power was also explained in a prior post. There are additional wires (not shown here) that are joined to power distribution strips only after all the LEDs are pressed into place.

The polyhedron faces were laser-cut from mirrored acrylic. To make the wiring process less error-prone, the order of connections was drawn on the back side of each face with a permanent marker (identical for every face, so this goes fairly quickly):

Pairs of faces were then joined up and are loosely joined with cable ties (there’s a specific alignment: note how the “in” and “out” wires always come and go from the sides); this produces 10 identical diamond shapes. The 10 diamonds were then laid out to match the wiring diagram above, and similarly joined with cable ties, producing a complete 2D map:

Starting from the top-left triangle and following the wiring sequence exactly, each LED pixel (beginning from the microcontroller end) is then pressed into place. This involves a lot of twisting and turning in order to avoid tangles in the wire, which is why the power leads should not be joined to anything yet (the strand needs to turn freely at one end):

Above: one triangle down, 19 to go. Below: all LEDs installed, power not yet connected:

Loosely rolling everything up into a ball at this point revealed a problem. I’d been obsessed with the idea that all of the electronics (including the microcontroller, XBee, power distribution bars and protective plastic covers — a roughly fist-sized wad of stuff) should fit inside the ball, so only a single power cable would protrude. But when folded up, the loops of wire between pixels didn’t allow enough space at the core. This required going through and doubling every loop back on itself:

The power cord would do double-duty as a means of suspending the ball. This may or may not actually be a good idea — I can’t help but imagine there’s some kind of electrical code regulation against doing this, but then IKEA lamps seem to do it all the time. So, purely as an experiment for now, an extra plastic piece locks neatly over the ferrite core at the end of the power cable. This is fed through what will be the top vertex of the polyhedron, where five triangles meet at a point. When it’s all cinched up, the cord won’t slip back out through the hole.

The flat icosahedron map is then loosely rolled up like a burrito, with more cable ties holding it in place. The bottom vertex is closed, then all of the power leads are joined to the distribution bars, the electronics package is screwed together and placed inside, and the top vertex is closed around the power cord.

Three or four passes are then made around all of the cable ties, gradually transforming the shape from a chaotic molten glop into a neatly-ordered polyhedron…albeit a bristly polyhedron at this point:

Two tools can be helpful for finishing. The first, a cable tie gun, is not essential but can really improve the final cinching down of each piece, to get every cable tie uniformly snug. The second is an ordinary nail clipper, to cut each cable tie flush (wire cutters don’t cut them quite flush, resulting in hundreds of sharp little plastic points and a disco ball that’s very painful to handle!).

The microcontroller inside had previously been programmed with the LEDstream sketch — essentially the same as used by Adalight and Adavision, with just a small change to read from the XBee module rather than the USB port. No code had been written for the ball at this point, but the Plasma demo from Adavision would at least show if the ball was receiving data. After plugging it in and firing up the code, it works!

Some ideas didn’t pan out as hoped. Remember those 5 extra LEDs from the wiring diagram? The project used five LED strands, which come in lengths of 25 pixels each (125 pixels total), while the icosahedreon needed only 120 (20 faces x 6 pixels per face). The extra five could have been trimmed off and used in some mini-project, but instead I had the idea to use these to illuminate the interior of the ball, which would then be visible through Adafruit logo-shaped cutouts at each vertex:

In practice, the internal LEDs didn’t provide uniform lighting. They tended to get smooshed up against one face or another, and would throw off the color of the outside LEDs in that specific area. So the code now leaves these LEDs turned off.

“Bronze mirror” wasn’t the best choice of materials; it tends to photograph as almost black. Future iterations will use traditional “clear” mirror.

XBee also didn’t perform as well as hoped, but that’s a post for another day. In the meantime, here’s a dinosaur holding up a disco ball:

Why spend time in a crowded and cold times square when you can make your OWN Times Square LED ball? Perfect for new years eve, disco parties, weddings, raves, bar mitzvahs, or just a romantic night in. This DIY LED Disco Ball is made using Adafruit’s 12mm LED pixels, an Arduino and two 2.4GHz XBee’s (for wireless disco control!). The LED pattern is controlled by the open source graphics language, Processing so it works on Windows, Mac or Linux computers. The ball pattern is made of a dozen laser cut acrylic panels that are ziptied together and the hanging cord is also the power supply cable (HD video here).

We’ll have a full tutorial after the new year so stay tuned and get your leisure suit to the cleaners!

Contains:
12mm Diffused Digital RGB LED Pixels (Strand of 25) – WS2801
Arduino Uno R3 (Atmega328 – assembled)
XBee Module – Series 01 – XB24-AWI-001
XBee Adapter kit – v1.1
USB XBee Adapter

Github:
https://github.com/adafruit/Adafruit-X2-Time-Ball

Comes in a strip of 10 pieces. If you order more than one strip, it will come as multiple strips of 10, not one long strip.

Please note this is a surface mount part! it is possible to solder thin wires to the pads but its designed for use on a SMT PCB. We do have an Eagle package for this LED in our github library repository, called RGBLED5050 that you can use in your next PCB design. If you are not comfortable with hand soldering SMT parts, check out our other RGB LEDs such as the thru-hole ones or in pixels/strips.

In stock and shipping now!

NEW PRODUCT – 1.8 SPI TFT display, 160×128 18-bit color – ST7735R driver. We just love this little 1.8″ TFT display, with true TFT color (up to 18-bits per pixel!), fine 160×128 resolution, two white LED backlight that runs on 3.3V and a very easy SPI interface that requires only 4 or 5 digital pins to send pixels to the display.

Please note! This is just the raw display, not attached to a PCB or for use with a breadboard. If you want to use this out of the box with no surface mount soldering, check out our fully assembled 1.8″ TFT breakout board with microSD card holder. This display is for experts who are comfortable soldering a surface mount display using fine pitch soldering techniques! This display also is for 3.3V use only, so be sure to use a level shifter if you’re going to use it with 5.0V microcontrollers.

Want to use this TFT display on your next project? We have it already in our Eagle library, under the name JDT-1800!

We have a full C/C++ library for the ST7735R chip that drives this display in github

In stock, shippin’ now!

What a cool present. LED Hula Hoop spells @carrotcreative logo.. Uses Adafruit LED strips!

A quiet holiday provided some much-needed time for making progress on the New Year’s disco ball — officially now titled the “X2 Time Ball.”

The discosohedron Time Ball will have 120 RGB LED pixels on its surface…that’s nearly as many as the Adavison video wall, and faced similar problems of feeding power to than many hungry LEDs (nearly 7 Amps worth!). Adavision used an ATX computer power supply…an excellent frugality hack because these power supplies are plentiful and cheap (sometimes reclaimed from old equipment). But as a “fashion item,” the Time Ball would benefit from clean cabling…not to mention that the loud fans in some ATX power supplies can be like working next to a jet engine.

Since ample power is going to be a recurring need as customers’ LED projects grow in scope and sophistication, we’ve been evaluating different options, such as this laptop-style power brick:

The brick is compact, fanless, provides 5 Volts at up to 10 Amps, uses the same 5.5/2.1mm power connector as the smaller 2 Amp supply and is compatible with the screw terminal adapter. Looks like a winner all around, so expect to see this in the store some time in the weeks ahead! (Until then, Ask an Engineer viewers know the drill: “It’s not out yet, so don’t ask.”)

A lot of devices use this same plug, including our 9V and 12V power supplies. In order to avoid expensive blue smoke and heartbreak, I’ve gotten into the habit of immediately labeling all power supplies near the tip so they don’t get mixed up with the wrong equipment. Over-voltage will kill your LEDs!

For distributing power, Adavision required soldering pairs of power wires to ATX power cables. Wanting something that could be more easily dismantled and reconfigured in future projects, I’ve been examining alternatives such as these barrier strips and jumpers:

The barrier strips are fairly common and can be found at Radio Shack, the electrical department in better-stocked hardware stores, or various online sources. Meanwhile, the 8-position jumper (which converts the barrier strip into a single “bus bar”) is seemingly milled from a single block of unobtanium or something. The only place I’ve located this elusive item so far is…drumroll for irony…Radio Shack!

Two six-position barrier strips are used, one each for +5V and ground. Terminal spades have been crimped onto the power leads for five LED strands, as well as leads for the microcontroller and heavy-gauge wire to the screw terminal adapter for the power supply. The jumper strips are cut down to size with beefy wire cutters. Plastic covers will later be added to avoid electrical shorts:

The project provided an opportunity to test something out that I’ve been eager to try. If you’ve worked with longer LED strands powered from one end, you may have observed a phenomenon where the furthest LEDs become progressively discolored, due to the voltage drop along the length of the wire. This is why I’ve been adamant about limiting strands to about 25 LEDs (or 1 meter with the LPD8806 strips) before adding additional power taps. The voltage drop on shorter strands is less noticeable.

A common work-around is to power longer strands from both ends. Generally speaking, this probably works well enough in most situations, but it does leave the door open to possible gremlins later when you least expect it. Ground loops — multiple paths to ground — could make the data signals more susceptible to interference. Everything works fine on your desk, then you set it up elsewhere — perhaps there’s an unseen microwave oven on the other side of the wall — and are up ’til 3am looking for the bug you think is in the software.

To avoid this with Adavision, strands were powered from the middle — 25 pixels to the left, 25 to the right. Limiting the strand length makes the voltage drop less obvious:

If you’ve been to the west coast Maker Faire then you may have met my friend Lindsay and his Electric Giraffe, 17 feet tall and covered head-to-toe in LEDs. Needless to say, he’s had a bit of experience with LEDs and long distances:

A simple trick he showed me is to power the strands from opposite ends: +5V at one end, ground at the other. Because the power to every LED then passes through an equal length of wire, the voltage drop is consistent. There’s still some voltage drop — you can’t change the laws of physics — but it’s uniform along the entire strand and all the LEDs are equally bright. And no ground loop:

Five such strands are used in the Time Ball. The clock and data wires are joined from each strand to the next to form a continuous 125 LED strand with five +5V and five ground wires leading to the power blocks. Only 120 of these LEDs are needed for the ball…the rest could be cut off and used in a small project, but in case a complete strand was needed later I opted to leave them attached, stuffed inside the ball and not addressed by the software.

Set your calculator to “maths”…

Yesterday two basic criteria for our New Year’s LED project were established:

1. Our “ball” will actually be an icosahedron — a 20-sided shape — for ease of assembly. Each face will have six LEDs, for 120 LEDs total.
2. To create meaningful patterns on the ball, rather than just random blinking, it’s necessary to know the coordinates of every LED. Therefore, a software model will need to approximate the physical thing.

The first step to finding the LED coordinates is to establish the positions of each of the 12 vertices of the icosahedron, even though there are no LEDs there. Once those points are known, all the LEDs can be located through interpolation.

There are a number of ways of constructing an icosahedron…the Greeks were working up the math in 400 B.C., the Scots might have hammered it out in the late Neolithic Age…though some protozoa and viruses had us all beat by half a billion years or so.

Our “ball” will hang from one vertex at the top, so we’ll follow a construction method to suit. When viewed down the vertical axis, there’s a clear 5-fold symmetry:

Starting with just the radius of those “spokes” from the center (we’ll use a value of 1.0 — the units are arbitrary), a couple formulas are all that’s needed to find the 3D position of one vertex, and from that to replicate all the remaining vertices by revolving around the center axis. Wikipedia can help with the maths!

From those vertices we can then identify edges and faces. Using two edge vectors from each face, the triangular 1-2-3 layout of the LEDs can be interpolated across this. Wrapped up in just a short Processing sketch, we now have a tumbling 3D icosahedron with LED dots in the desired places! Later, we’ll issue colors based on each LED’s location.

A test sketch for Processing is available from the project’s Github repository. This does not yet communicate with an Arduino or the LEDs; it is strictly for validating the geometry. It’s a good visual match for the model on the table!

“Simplify, simplify, simplify.” — Thoreau

“One ‘simplify’ would have sufficed.” — Emerson

With a nifty construction method settled upon, it was time to decide on a polygonal shape for our “new year’s disco ball.” This seemed like a solved problem — geodesic domes are sufficiently popular that you can find kits and calculators all over the internet — but we soon hit a snag: while at first glance these domes appear to be comprised of many identical triangles, it turns out there are actually very subtle variations throughout. This is not a technical problem at all; it could certainly be done, but it fails our Annoying Test. Each piece must be aligned with exactly the right neighbors and turned exactly the right way. Now repeat the process dozens or hundreds of times without a single mistake. No.

So, Plan B, we looked at Archimedian solids. Many of these polyhedra achieve a nice ball-like shape while being comprised of just two or three types of regular polygons. The truncated icosahedron (colloquially sometimes labeled a “soccer ball” or “Buckyball”) was especially pleasing:

On its own, the shape is now pretty easy to build. But when it came time to think about lighting this up, even this shape proved just a bit too complex. Here’s why:

If we just wanted to jam LEDs in there and blink them at random, that would be simple and we could call it done. But that’s…just…lacking something. We’d really like to be able to address these LEDs with order and purpose…top to bottom, around the circumference, you name it. And again, there’s nothing technically barring us from doing that with this shape. It’s simply a matter of not wanting to alienate readers and kit-builders with limited patience. You see, to keep track of their positions, every single LED would need to be installed in a specific place, in a specific sequence, somewhere on this map:

Not fun to try to explain…or read…in instructions. So we’ll back off one more step and consider the Platonic solids, which are each comprised of a single repeating regular polygon. Gamers are well familiar with them:

(Please ignore the d10 and imagine a d6 in its place!)

The dodecahedron (in blue) and icosahedron (red) are both vaguely round…ish. We settled on the icosahedron, comprised of 20 equilateral triangles, because the math is simpler, and it spreads out nicely as a flat map:

Much easier for indicating where will LEDs go! And a quick ugly prototype confirms that the LEDs will fit:

So, after that whole digression, we’ve come full circle to use one of the original cable-tie assembly shapes we had already looked at!

We’ll make the finished ball (yes, we’re still calling it a “ball,” despite its obvious polygonality) in mirrored acrylic for added bling factor. With 20 faces, and six LEDs per face, that’s 120 LED pixels total. We’ll need those figures later when coming up with a power supply…

ST7565 Menu. Alex writes -

I recently completed an independent school project for which I designed and built a prototype of a hand-held sensor platform. It consisted of an ATmega328, a ST7565 LCD and a couple sensors. I ended up using the Arduino environment with Adufruit Industries’ ST7565 Arduino library. Being tired of writing new code every time I wanted some sort of LCD user interaface, I set out to create my own API on top of Adafruit’s library.

The basic structure I was after was a menu based UI, involving layers of menus and sub-menus, each consisting of different selectable items, whose functions were all user-defined. This ended up being an easier task than it sounds, and I ended up with a rather cool library which I’ve dubbed the exceedingly creative name of ST7565 Menu

Graphic ST7565 Positive LCD (128×64) with RGB backlight + extras. This graphical display looks great, costs less! The dark gray pixels are visible in daylight, and there’s also a full RGB LED backlight, which you can control with PWM to make any color you can imagine.

Four mounting holes and a blank 11 pin 2mm-pitch labeled breakout on the side – we just soldered some wire to each hole as shown in the photos, its very easy. (The LCDs have no wires soldered in when we ship them)

Bonus! We’re including a free 4050 level shifter chip so that you can safely use it with your favorite 5V microcontroller

Advantages!

• Lower cost than KS0108 LCDs
• Serial interface uses only 4 or 5 digital pins
• Low power, full-color RGB LED backlight
• Visible in daylight without backlight
• Works perfectly with 3V logic

Challenges!…

• 3.3v power and logic means a level converter is needed for 5V Arduinos (we include this part when purchasing from us)
• Microcontroller must buffer display – uses 1Kb of RAM. This means you must upgrade to a ATmega328 if you are using an Arduino with a ’8 or ’168

For a more detailed tutorial, including how to wire up the display with a 4050, see our writeup at http://www.ladyada.net/learn/lcd/st7565.html We have C code and an Arduino library ready to go (we suggest reading the above tutorial too!).

In stock and shippin’ now!

In making our LED disco ball for the new year, it will be necessary to transition from the flat planes of Adalight and Adavision into the three-dimensional world. This has been a humbling experience in the KISS principle: “keep it simple, stupid!” The first tries did not end well…

Our initial attempts involved taking existing 3D forms (globes, salad bowls and lamp post diffusers, among other things) and drilling holes over the entire surface for mounting LED pixels. This is not an entirely rotten idea, but it falls short of one of our goals: we might like to offer kit packs in the future…or at the very least, readers should be able to follow along at home! Asking would-be customers to drill a precise geodesic pattern of holes into anything wouldn’t be a great PR move. (By way of comparison: you might be familiar with the Hoberman Sphere toy…but few recall the earliest version to land in stores: a bag of eleventy bajillion nearly identical plastic parts, to be assembled by the customer…or, just as likely, to be half assembled and either returned or flung in the trash in frustration. Later editions came pre-assembled, and the rest is history.)

Disco ball FAIL!

Two additional factors pushed us toward an alternate approach:

1. A kit should be easy to package and efficient to ship.
2. Laser-cut acrylic is the bee’s knees for holding LED pixels!

Adalight—ambient lighting for your monitor—was one line of LEDs, formed into a loop. Adavision—a mini LED video wall—spread out into a 2D grid. It’s only natural then to take the next step into the third dimension. Not simply a cube though…with the new year nearly upon us, and paying tribute to Adafruit’s NYC home, why not a shimmery Times Square-style “disco ball?” This would showcase the WS2801 Pixels’ greatest feature: unconstrained by flat planes or fixed grids, they can be spread out into any shape. Anything you can punch 11.5mm holes through, you can festoon with LEDs, whether it’s your backpack or the body panels of a Burning Man art car!

(Ours won’t be anywhere near this big.)

The Times Square ball drop always seemed a bit odd to me. New Year’s Eve? Ball drop? Buh…what? It was an excuse to stay up late, partying and making noise, and I never gave it much thought. Years later I learned the ball drop actually has a fascinating precedent, tracing its roots to one of the most pivotal inventions of modern commerce…

The marine chronometer was the first mechanical clock of sufficient precision to determine a ship’s longitude, based on the difference in the displayed time and the observed “local noon” time. It was largely the work of a single person, English carpenter and self-taught clockmaker John Harrison (1693–1776), who persevered in developing and refining his invention despite being largely overlooked by the establishment.

From the 1820s through 1920s, major shipping ports worldwide were home to observatories equipped with time balls, large and sometimes brightly-colored spheres that could be easily seen from ships in the harbor. At a fixed time each day (typically 1pm local time), the time ball was dropped so that all ships could precisely synchronize their clocks.

Prior to the invention of the chronometer, global navigation could be a hit-or-miss, potentially deadly endeavor. Harrison’s clocks in their day were as significant an advancement to maritime safety as the later inventions of radio and GPS, and opened the world to trade and travel.

It all comes back to science. So, this New Year’s Eve, as you watch the ball drop, raise your glass in a toast to Mr. Harrison and his amazing clocks.

Image credits: By Clare Cridland (Macy’s Times Square crystal ball, New York City) [CC-BY-2.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons. Chronometer, photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net). [CC-BY-SA-2.5 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)], via Wikimedia Commons. Greenwich Observatory, by Green Lane (Own work) [GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

AdaVision – DIY 150 LED video wall project pack. AdaVision is our biggest project pack ever! For all lovers of LEDs and LED walls, we finally have a project pack for making your very own stand-alone mini-LED wall. This project is designed to work with Processing to display graphics demos, low rez MPEG movies, Processing sketches and animations, or a webcam but of course its all open source and documented so that you can adapt it for your own nefarious & blinky purposes.

Once assembled, the LED wall is 17.7″ wide x 11.8″ tall x 3″ deep with 150 diffused LEDs arranged in a 15×10 matrix. The LEDs connect to a small Arduino-like microcontroller board that does the driving work and provides a USB interface. Any computer with a USB port running Windows, Mac or Linux can drive the wall by sending commands to the microcontroller. We suggest using the open source graphics system Processing and have a bunch of fantastic tutorials and example for using the wall in Processing. Please visit the AdaVision project page for tutorials, instructions, details, software and more!

Each project pack contains:

• 150 x 12mm diffused LED pixels
• Laser cut plastic enclosure in black 3mm acrylic
• Bag of 4-40 1/2″ screws and hexnuts
• Microcontroller board
• JST cable to connect to pixels
• 3 x ATX power cables
• Mini-B USB cable for connecting to a computer
• 6″ x 1/8″ heatshrink

You will also need to provide the following (not included!)

• Soldering iron and solder
• Screwdriver for assembling plastic case
• ATX power supply with power cable with more than 5V/10A output – available at any computer supply store

We make these packs “to order” sign up to get an email when we have them ready!

These displays are ‘chainable’ – connect one output to the next input – but our Arduino example code does not support this (yet). It requires a high speed processor and more RAM than the Arduino has!

These panels require 13 digital pins (6 bit data, 7 bit control) and a good 5V supply, up to 2A per panel. We suggest our 2A regulated 5V adapter and then connecting a 2.1mm jack Please check out our tutorial for more details!

Comes with: a single 32×32 RGB panel, two IDC cables, a power cable, 4 mounting screws and mini-magnets (it appears these are often mounted on a magnetic base)

Keep in mind that these displays are designed to be driven by FPGAs or other high speed processors: they do not have built in PWM control of any kind. Instead, you’re supposed to redraw the screen over and over to ‘manually’ PWM the whole thing. On a 16 MHz arduino, we managed to squeeze 12-bit color (4096 colors) with 40% CPU usage but this display would really shine if driven by any FPGA, CPLD, Propeller, XMOS or other high speed multi-core controller. The good news is that the display is pre-white balanced with nice uniformity so if you turn on all the LEDs its not a particularly tinted white.

Of course, we wouldn’t leave you with a datasheet and a “good luck!” We have a full wiring diagrams and working Arduino library code with examples from drawing pixels, lines, rectangles, circles and text. You’ll get your color blasting within the hour! On an Arduino, you’ll need 13 digital pins, and about 1600 bytes of RAM to buffer the 12-bit color image. At this time we do not have wiring documentation for the MEGA.

In stock and shipping now!

Great project in the Adafruit forums today! – RGB LED Wheelchair Project, Cranium writes -

My friend, Corey, wanted to upgrade the 4 white leds he used to see tight corners at night navigating in the house and to illuminate his chair a little if he were wheeling down a street after dark for safety reasons.

I thought a couple meters of Digital Addressable RGB LED Strips around his chair would be a good solution. These gave me the ability to provide him some good safety lighting at night as well as some fun lights everywhere else.

This is an Arduino based controller running on an atMega328 microprocessor on a home etched PCB. Power is provided off one of his chair’s batteries and regulated down to 5V through a beefy 50W 10A capable regulator. Under the right armrest, there is a small box that contains the On/Off switch as well as a button to change lighting modes of the strip. The strip is hot glued on some aluminum angle we mounted on the back an under the seat of the chair. The angle was anodized to make it more reflective and does very well.

I currently have 17 lighting sequences programmed with 15 being active. Initial prototypes utilized a sound level monitor but he decided he didn’t want that so it was disabled. On the PCB, I added the possibility of a couple of future upgrades including a couple 1W leds, another button, and a potentiometer.

The lighting modes available now in the sequence on the video are:

• x-mas theme
• single color changing light rotating around
• whole strip illuminating an led at a time to change colors
• slow color change of whole strip
• color bands shifting around the strip
• flashing yellow (caution)
• flashing red/blue (police mode)
• a red and blue light circling around in opposite directions with 4 led tails trailing behind
• white light
• random light changes on individual leds
• random light changes on the strip changed one led at a time starting at a random point and in a random direction
• a white led every 6th led shifting around a green background
• a kit like effect on all four sides
• all lights randomly sequence on with a random color then randomly sequence off
• a flickering of all lights quickly with a random color

He can now see and be seen much better!

Getting Started- Vacuum Fluorescent Display & Teensyduino | A work in progress….

This is a quick tutorial on getting a VFD working with an Arduino (or Arduino equivalent system). VFDs are beautiful devices with a wonderful hexagonal mesh of wires and this lovely green/blue glow. Operating at around 5V, they offer a nice alternative to high voltage Nixie tubes, while still retaining a lot of the charm.

This tutorial will show you how to connect a Arduino-like device to a VFD display as well as a basic program to display text.

Uses teensy, and VFD display from our shop! Nice looking tutorial w/fritzing

Elastic Electric/Data/USB Cables via the Adafruit forums.

Somewhat related!

Conductive Rubber Cord Stretch Sensor + extras! Measuring stretch forces isn’t easy – unless you have some conductive rubber cord! This cord is 2mm diameter, and 1 meter long, made of carbon-black impregnated rubber. Usually this material is used for EMF gasketing, but its also very fun to play with.

In a ‘relaxed’ state, the resistance is about 350 ohms per inch. As you pull on it, the resistance increases (the particles get further apart). As you stretch it out, the resistance increases linearly. So lets say you have a 6″ piece – thats about 2.1 Kohms. Stretch it to 10″ long and now it is 10″/6″*2.1K = 3.5 Kohms. You can stretch the rubber about 50-70% longer than the resting length, so a 6″ piece shouldn’t be stretched more than 10″. Once the force is released, the rubber will shrink back, although its not very ‘fast’ and it takes a minute or two to revert to its original length.

This stuff is fun, so we give you a full meter and also two alligator clips (to connect to the cord) and a 10K resistor. Together, you can use these to make a simple voltage divider. Then use our handy Thermistor tutorial to measure the analog voltage and convert that back to resistance.

In stock and shipping!

Awesome project using RGB LED strips, with electronics designed by Interactive Matter:

You may know that the whole spring and summer has been a bit quiet over here at Interactive Matter. And again for a reason. I was asked by a friend to build the electronics for a massive LED installation for the  ‘Hsinchu Biomedical Science Park Exhibition Center’.

The result was very impressive: An 10 meter long installation, consisting of 30 moving triangles with controllable RGB LEDs in them, acting as a moving display.

A XMOS controller driving 60 stepper motors,  with about 100 meters of HL1606 digitally controlled LED strips composing a moving LED matrix of  30×102 pixels. The concept and design was done by Taiwanese partners. Interactive Matter only provided the electronics and programming.

…

The basic idea was simple: The XMOS XC-2 kit has 4 processing cores, three of them having two 12 pin connectors. So each core can support 16 HL1606 LED strips (some control pins and 8 data pins per connector, with two connectors per core). Due to the parallel architecture of the XMOS controllers it was very easy to create some scalable implementation for the HL1606 driver). Implementing the driver was also quite a breeze since adafruit hosts the datasheet there are some good Arduino tutorials for this. The big problem was that the HL1606 only supports 2 grayscale levels, while it was only practical to use just 1 bit control (on or off). So this called for some kind of software controlled PWM. The lenght of the strip and the communication speed controls the update rate of the LED strip. And especially the communication speed varies widely with electric noise, cable length, power supply quality and so on. The solution to this was to implement some pulse density modulation. By this the grey scale modulation the color depth automatically adapts to the image refresh rate on the LEDs. The faster the update of the LED strip in comparison to the update of the RGB data displayed on the LED strip, the higher the perceived color depth. Nice (and necessary).

This is an amazing and beautiful project!

*note that the RGB LED strips in the shop are now controlled with LPD8806 chips, which provide considerably more subtle color control than the HL1606′s.

Troynh writes -

Just wanted to say thanks for the LPD8806 tutorial and sketch! I’m in the middle of building a UFO Multiwii Quad-Copter and these are going to look awesome while flying at night.

NEW PRODUCT – 4-pin JST SM Receptacle Cable. This 4-wire cable is 20cm long and has a JST SM type connector receptacle on the end. It mates with the JST SM plug cable and is good for whenever you have 4 wires you want to be able to plug and unplug. We like the solid and compact nature of these connectors and the latch that keeps the cable from coming apart easily. For more information, check the JST SM connector datasheet.

Our digital addressable LED strip and 12mm pixels also come with JST SM connectors and you can use these cables to connect to the input or output port

This cable can be used to connect to the OUTPUT port of our LPD8806 digital addressable LED strip so that you can connect another strip to the output, or perhaps apply power to the ‘output’ end. It can be used to connect to the INPUT port of our WS2801 LED Pixels so that you can easily plug it into your Arduino or similar.

In stock and shipping!

NEW PRODUCT – 4-pin JST SM Plug Cable. This 4-wire cable is 20cm long and has a JST SM type connector plug on the end. It mates with the JST SM receptacle cable and is good for whenever you have 4 wires you want to be able to plug and unplug. We like the solid and compact nature of these connectors and the latch that keeps the cable from coming apart easily. For more information, check the JST SM connector datasheet.

Our digital addressable LED strip and 12mm pixels also come with JST SM connectors and you can use these cables to connect to the input or output port

This cable can be used to connect to the INPUT port of our LPD8806 digital addressable LED strip (so that you can easily plug it into your Arduino or similar. It can be used to connect to the OUTPUT port of our WS2801 LED Pixels so that you can connect another strand to the output, or perhaps apply power to the ‘output’ end.

In stock and shipping now!

Over at NYC Resistor, Trammell and Adam decided to upgrade the space with some ambient lighting, controlled by their hexascroller display via a Teensy. Trammell writes:

Adam and I upgraded Hexascroller to control 5 m of Adafruit RGB LED strip through a spare serial port connected to a Teensy 2.0 that drives the strip via SPI. Now when a new message is displayed, the accent lights switch to a bright flashing mode to attract attention, then they will return to soothing, slow color changing mode.

Nice work, guys!

NEW PRODUCT – 1.8 18-bit color TFT LCD display with microSD card breakout. This lovely little display breakout is the best way to add a small, colorful and bright display to any project. Since the display uses 4-wire SPI to communicate and has its own pixel-addressable frame buffer, it can be used with every kind of microcontroller. Even a very small one with low memory and few pins available!

The 1.8″ display has 128×160 color pixels. Unlike the low cost “Nokia 6110″ and similar LCD displays, which are CSTN type and thus have poor color and slow refresh, this display is a true TFT! The TFT driver (ST7735R) can display full 18-bit color (262,144 shades!). And the LCD will always come with the same driver chip so there’s no worries that your code will not work from one to the other.

The breakout has the TFT display soldered on (it uses a delicate flex-circuit connector) as well as a ultra-low-dropout 3.3V regulator and a 3/5V level shifter so you can use it with 3.3V or 5V power and logic. We also had a little space so we placed a microSD card holder so you can easily load full color bitmaps from a FAT16/FAT32 formatted microSD card.

Of course, we wouldn’t just leave you with a datasheet and a “good luck!” – we’ve written a full open source graphics library that can draw pixels, lines, rectangles, circles, text and bitmaps as well as example code and a wiring tutorial. The code is written for Arduino but can be easily ported to your favorite microcontroller!

In stock, shippin’ now!

Mini RGB LED video wall using a Netduino and an Adafruit LED strips…

16×10 RGB LED display built with an Adafruit LPD8806 LED strip and a Netduino mini as the controller. The display is capable of showing over 2 million colors. What’s not to like about RGB LEDs? With their bright, mesmerizing glow, often capable of displaying millions of colors, they’re a great to way to catch the attention of the viewer. Now, what if you had a 5 meter long RGB LED strip, loaded with 160 RGB LEDs to play with? Oh, the possibilities… It so happens that Adafruit, in their infinite wisdom, carries a very nice RGB LED strip, powered by a LPD8806 driver and encased in a waterproof sleeve. What about turning it into a mini video wall for instance? Think ‘Times Square’, just smaller

BACK IN STOCK – Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip. These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. The PWM is built into each chip so once you set the color you can stop talking to the strip and it will continue to PWM all the LEDs for you

Built in 1.2 MHz high speed 7-bit PWM for each channel – that means it can do 21-bit color per LED (way more than the eye can easily discern). Once you set the brightness level for the LEDs, your microcontroller can go off and do other things, no need to continuously update it, or clock it. The best part is that compared to the WS2801 which can only run one LED at a time, this chip can drive 2 RGB LEDs which means the price stays the same as the older HL1606 strip, nice!

The strip is made of flexible PCB material, and comes with a waterproof sheathing.

You can cut this stuff pretty easily with wire cutters, there are cut-lines every 2.5″/6.2cm (2 LEDs each). Solder to the 0.1″ copper pads and you’re good to go. Of course, you can also connect strips together to make them longer, just watch how much current you need! We have a 5V/2A supply that should be able to drive 1 or more meters (depending on use)

They come in 5 meter reels with a 4-pin JST SM connector on each end, and are sold by the meter! If you buy 5m at a time, you’ll get full reels. If you buy less than 5m, you’ll get a single strip, but it will be a cut piece from a reel which may or may not have a connector on it.

BACK IN STOCK – Digital Addressable RGB LED with PWM waterproof flexi strip!

Adalight Reloaded: Super Elite Chuck Norris Edition! pburgess writes -

Funny how that happens…I’d gone in just to test out a little change to the Adalight code, and ended up spending most of the weekend on a nearly complete rewrite with a double-helping of awesomesauce! This involves changes on both the Arduino and Processing sides, and as always you can download the latest from the Git repository:

https://github.com/adafruit/Adalight

(New visitors: if you’re just joining us, this is Adalight: http://ladyada.net/make/adalight/ )

So what’s new?

• Support for multiple monitors. There have been occasional tweaks and suggestions posted to the forums on achieving this. Here’s the official implementation. Handles any number of displays, and each can be a different size/layout if needed.
• Performance improvements. The exact speedup you’ll see depends on many factors, but a few systems we’ve tested show anywhere from 10 to 30 percent better frame rates.
• More nuanced lighting control. LEDs “fade” from frame to frame, rather than an immediate, seizure-inducing flash. Also, a minimum background brightness can be set. Both are configurable, or can be switched off to run like the old code.
• Auto timeout on LEDs. If the Arduino doesn’t receive any data from the PC in 15 seconds (configurable), the LEDs will be switched off. This avoids that annoying “stuck pixel” effect when quitting the Adalight sketch in certain situations.
• Automatic port detection. Adalight can scan through all serial ports until it identifies an Arduino running the LEDstream code.Update: due to a conflict between Processing 1.5.1 and the 32u4 board, this doesn’t work in all settings, so it’s no longer the default mode. If you’re using a “classic” Arduino and/or Processing 2.0 alpha, this should work fine, you’ll just need to enable that code (very easy, see comments in source).
• 100% gluten-free, and no trans-fats! No animals were harmed in the making of this software. Any time the cat wanted food or to go outside, I’d stop working and take care of it.

Load the “LEDstream” sketch in the Arduino IDE, compile and upload to your board. Then load the “Adalight” sketch in Processing and give it a try…and remember, you can always use the “Export Application” feature in Processing to create a standalone double-clickable program; no need to launch the Processing IDE every time you want to run Adalight.

The old LEDstream and Adalight are both cross-compatible with the newer versions, so reprogramming the Arduino isn’t absolutely 100% essential if you can’t get to it…they both still speak the same protocol. This is mostly for the LED timeout and auto-detection in the new code.

Adalight – DIY Ambient Monitor Lighting Project Pack. Build your own ambient-light addition for a monitor or media PC television with the Adalight project pack! This project pack is for our “Adalight” project tutorial. By running the Processing code on your computer, the halo of LEDs will follow the screen colors to provide an awesome ambient light display that adds pop to TV shows, movies or games!

This pack contains:

• A strand of 25 x 12mm LED pixels
• 5V 2A power adapter
• 2.1mm female power jack

You’ll also need an Arduino (or compatible) and a USB cable, those are not included! You will also need some basic soldering tools and some wire, see the tutorial page for instructions.

LED Hand Turkey Sweater. Jessica writes -

I decided to give Thanksgiving the attention it deserves. As a kid, I loved making decorations for the Thanksgiving table. I thought whoever came up with the idea that your hand could be traced and transformed into a turkey was a genius. I made hand turkeys like they were going out of style – I even colored my fingers look like feathers so it would be more realistic.

Since I loved this so much as a kid, why wouldn’t I love the same activity as a so-called adult? Which is how the idea struck me, and I embarked on my second e-textile project: a LED hand turkey sweater.

My first idea was to have the turkey centered on a sweater. But while sweater shopping I discovered that apparently solid color crew necks are ‘sooooo last season’. I then went with plan B and moved the design to the lower-right corner of an orange v-neck sweater I picked up on the cheap.

Then it was turkey time! I traced my hand on a piece of brown felt and cut it out. Then, I sewed alternating rows of yellow and red LEDs onto my felt fingers with conductive thread. I then hand-stitched the felt to the sweater, added my batteries and stitched a beak, legs and an eye and….voilà!

Previous:
#ADA11 – Jessica Uelmen, Parallax, Educational project engineer.

This mini-tutorial is a little on the advanced side, its going to show how to separate our digital RGB LED strips on the overlapping section ends. All the strips are made of 1/2meter long sections. Between every 2 LEDs you can cut off the flex PCB at the dotted lines. However, every 1/2 meter you cannot just cut the strip but must pull apart the soldered sections. Its not terribly hard but worth documenting!

Read more!

ColorNode » DigitalMisery.com.

ColorNode is a wireless Arduino-compatible microcontroller board designed to replace the stock controller board on GE Color Effects light strings.

ColorNode was inspired by the original controller protocol reverse-engineering effort featured here:  Hacking Christmas Lights. That work enabled simple control of each individual bulb of these light strings using just one pin on a microcontroller.  The stock controller works nice and the patterns are good, however being able to have full control of the color and brightness of each bulb unlocks the potential for awesome holiday light displays.  Hacking these lights is also relatively inexpensive, compared to using other addressable strings or light sequencers on the market.

Christmas is the season for LED hacking, with some OSHW LED string controllers!

NEW PRODUCT – 16×24 Red LED Matrix Panel – Chainable HT1632C Driver. These LED panels take care of all the work of making a big matrix display. Each panel has six 8×8 red matrix modules, for a 16×24 matrix. The panel has a HT1632C chip on the back with does all the multiplexing work for you and has a 3-pin SPI-like serial interface to talk to it and set LEDs on or off (you cannot set the LED to be individually dimmed, as in ‘grayscale’). There’s a few extras as well, such as being able to change the brightness of the entire display, or blink the entire display at 1 Hz.

One really nice thing about this particular LED matrix module is that it is designed to be ‘chainable’ – you can connect to 8 panels together to make an extra long display.

Comes with one fully assembled and ready to go panel, and a 10-pin IDC cable. You will need a microcontroller to control the display, our tutorial uses an Arduino but nearly any microcontroller with 3 digital output pins can be used. If you want to chain two displays, you can use the two IDC cables in the packages to connect them. But for 3+ chained displays you will need more cables – check the tutorial, search for “How many Cables do I need?” for an explaination

And of course, we have written a full tutorial and Arduino library that not only takes care of controlling the display, it also intelligently handles chained displays, so that they appear to be one long matrix. The library has functions for drawing pixels, lines, rectangles, circles and text. You’ll be making it light up in 15 minutes!

• Requires 5V power
• 3 digital pins for one panel
• Chainable up to 8 displays, each display requires an extra CS pin (so 8 displays requires 10 digital pins)
• 4.5″ x 3.5″ x 0.7″
• 4 x 0.125″ drill mounting holes
• HT1632C driver chip

In stock and shipping now!

TUTORIAL – 16×24 LED Matrix – Easy to use, chainable displays. 16×24 LED Matrix – Easy to use, chainable displays. These LED panels take care of all the work of making a big matrix display. Each panel has six 8×8 red matrix modules, for a 16×24 matrix. The panel has a HT1632C chip on the back with does all the multiplexing work for you and has a 3-pin SPI-like serial interface to talk to it and set LEDs on or off. There’s a few extras as well, such as being able to change the brightness of the entire display, or blink the entire display at 1 Hz.

One really nice thing about this particular LED matrix module is that it is designed to be ‘chainable’ – you can connect to 8 panels together to make an extra long display.

Read more!

dagthomas in the forums writes -

Just wanted to say I received the package, put it together and it worked like a charm. Bought a plastic lid which I attached to the VESA holder and applied everything to that. There are images of it at the end of my vid. Since everyone is doing films etc, thought I’d show off a little gaming.

Everyone, give Phillip Burgess a warm welcome – he’s joining us at Adafruit to do a lot of cool things as a “senior designer”

Phillip Burgess’ interests and career have spanned technology and art for decades. He’s been an occasional contributor at Hack a Day, curates the VintageCG channel on YouTube, and his gamut of work has ranged from illustrating gaming manuals to developing satellite mapping software. His first project for Adafruit was Adalight, and there’s lots more cool stuff in the pipeline