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.
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!
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.
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!
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!
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
NEW PRODUCT – SMT Cool White 5050 LED – 10 pack [6500-7000K]. These surface-mount LEDs are an easy way to add a lot of bright white dots to your project. They’re similar to the ones in our digital RGB LED strip, same size and shape, but do not have red/green/blue LED chips inside. Instead, there are 3 ultra bright cool white (6500-7000K) LEDs. They are half a centimeter on a side, which makes them small but not so small that they are impossible to hand solder. The LED is insanely bright, at a eyeball-blistering 20 Lumens (~6000mcd with 120 degree beam width).
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.
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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