Hardware Reference
In-Depth Information
The RGB LED strip sold by Adafruit industries (
http://www.adafruit.com/
products/1004
) consumes about 60 mA per segment. It is best recommended to drive
the RGB LED strip using a transistor switching circuit. We need to use three transistors for
the three colors and it is possible to control each color individually and it is also possible
to obtain a combinaion of colours.
It is possible to produce a secondary color using the RGB combinaions.
This can be achieved by turning on the RGB segments at the same ime
and varying the brightness of the primary colors. There are vast resources
available for such ips and tricks on the Internet and an explanaion of
this is beyond the scope of this topic.
Prepare for lift off
The Adafruit learning website provides examples for controlling the RGB LED using a pulse
width modulaion technique. The schemaic for the Analog RGB strip is shown in the
following diagram:
RGB LED strip schematic (borrowed from Adafruit)
