Having Fun with Arduino and Ledstrips

[Sjaak]

Hook up an Arduino to some RGB ledstrips, add a bit of code, stir for 5 minutes and voila...

[ark_ader]

Totally cool man! 

[thatpurplestuff]

Would love to see more info on how you managed to put this together... that is just freakin awesome!

[404]

looks great. Would make an awesome arcade sign. 

[Generic Eric]

I want an LED dance floor.  10'X10' of LED strips coated with epoxy. 

[dgame]

That is totally awesome!! Do you have a project page? Can you share the code/schematics? What parts did you use? Moar please.

[Generic Eric]

This project is waiting for this:

[Sjaak]

Parts used:

• Arduino Mega, but I could also have use an Arduino Uno or maybe even a Mini
• Digital RGB Led strips (https://www.adafruit.com/products/306)
• PC power supply

OK, this is how it works. I used 8 digital RGB led strips, each 1m long (3.3 feet) with 32 leds for a total of 256 leds. The leds can be individually addressed and have built in PWM (dimming). What this means is that you can send a command from the arduino saying "make led number 104 orange" and then led 104 will turn orange, but all the other leds remain unchanged.

Each strip gets 5V and GND from a pc power supply. The whole thing can use 16A if all the leds are white. I could have daisy chained the power, but then the last leds would be less bright because of the power drain.

The clock and data signal (green and blue) are daisy chained from strip 1 to strip2 to strip3, etc.

[dgame]

Very good. I have been interested in those RGB LED tables that people make. Those strips are really nice and make the wiring a whole lot simpler.

I also see that they can be cut and reconfigured so in theory the 8 strips could be setup to make a 10x20 Tetris board with a 7x8 next piece window, or a 16x16 RGB LED display, etc. Thanks for sharing.

Some of my favorites (not mine):



A cool 16x16 RGB LED project:



Another RGB LED Table with Tetris, Snake, and Super Mario?: