Make your own smart LED arrangement with the same fancy side light integrated LED that is used in our HalloWing M4, and side-emitting NeoPixel strip and pixels. These bare LEDs are a great alternative for folks who have loved and used Adafruit NeoPixel strips for a few years but want gorgeous, glowy light emitting at 90 degrees. This small 4020 (4mm x 2mm) RGB LED is fairly easy to solder and is the most compact way possible to integrate multiple bright LEDs to a design. The driver chip is inside the LED and has ~18mA constant current drive so the color will be very consistent even if the voltage varies, and no external resistors are required making your design minimal. Power the whole thing with 5VDC and you’re ready to rock.
This is a 4 pin LED chip version that is code-compatible and the same functionality as any other NeoPixels. The LEDs are ‘chainable’ by connecting the output of one chip into the input of another – see the datasheet for diagrams and pinouts. Our wonderfully-written NeoPixel library for Arduino supports these pixels! As it requires hand-tuned assembly it is only for AVR cores but others may have ported this chip driver code so please google around. An 8MHz or faster processor is required.
There are three LEDs inside, red green and blue. The RGB LEDs are controlled by a tiny chip that takes a 24-bit color level via the clock and data in and then does all the PWM control for you. So you just ‘set’ the color data once. Like any NeoPixels you can chain them together, the output of one leading into the input of another for near-infinitely long strips.
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.
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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, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, 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 is every Wednesday at 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat and our Discord!
