onsdag 10. mai 2017

WS2812B RGB Led Chips

The soldering pads are ok sized even for
persons that arent soldering very often.
Recieved 100 WS2812B RGB Led Chips today.
These are the same kind that is used in the neopixel (and clones of such).

It means you can do adressable RGB leds with "as many" pixels as you want, simply using just data in / data out (and power + ground).

Adafruit has a nice tech sheet of the LED chips (5050): https://cdn-shop.adafruit.com/datasheets/WS2812.pdf

I have had fun with these lights in the past, by hacking IKEA lamps, making my own MQTT IoT smart-light (connected to Home Assitant).

So, what are potential use-cases?

  • Very compact lights on a bicycle
  • Very compact lights on a stroller
  • Hidden lighting insde a house, behind a TV etc.
  • Lights for toys/RC-cars, etc.
Since they are individual adressable, you dont use a lot of ports on the MCU.. Let's say you want to make a doll house with rgb lighting in every room, also on the outside. That is not an issue, you can just use a couple of pins on the MCU :-) Then you can use other pins for motion sensors, oled display etc.

Of course there is a limit of how much current you can draw from the MCU, so you might have to provide external power if you are using a lot of leds.