This is the successor to my old (and lame) RGB LED Ring project.
Version ’2.0 alpha’ – an intermediate step to true enlightenment – uses one LED driver IC and 3 P-channel MOSFETs cycling through the primary colors. This requires special attention in the code to attempt color balancing (forced dot correction at all times).
As of ’2.0 beta’ (likely to become the final version) it comes with 3 dedicated constant current LED driver chips (MBI5168), which completely avoids multiplexing the LEDs and boosts brightness again. Color balancing is done entirely in hardware using 3 potentiometers. The hardware differences should be taken care of in the core part of the demo code, ‘User-land’ code is mostly the same.
Lovely!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, or even use Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for MakeCode, CircuitPython, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell with Google Hangouts On-Air is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
Thanks for featuring my little project.
If anybody wants a go, I have a couple of circuit boards left over. They’re small and cheap. If you need all parts, that can be arranged too 😉