Rgb lights strips

Fosh612 · September 1, 2019

I am planning to do a small project which the title states. I would like to use Arduino uno because I am somewhat familiar with it.

this was a post I did two months ago so I want to revisit this. I had no progress due to work. Anyway, my question isn’t how I code but what I need. Someone posted the fastled which seem nice. My assignment is to just control colors and speed of the blinking effect. Will I have to get a breadboard and connect it through that? I am just looking for a way to simply connect the light strip with everything the Arduino board and computer simply. I just don’t want the extra trouble and prices for more components. Probably a dumb question but I am new. Sorry for long post. Thank you.

DevBlox · September 1, 2019

Three arduino PWM outputs and three MOSFET's (one for each color), 12v RGB LED strip and some programming knowledge. If you want to have a custom driver for your PC to communicate with it, ++ on that programming knowledge.

trag1c · September 1, 2019

Depends on the strips. Are they PWM control or serial bus control (as in WS2812b or APA102). If they're PWM control you will need mosfets and a power supply as @DevBlox stated. This is because you're using the duty cycle to change the power or brightness of the LEDS. If they're serial bus then all you need is a power supply with leads going to both the strip and board + signal lines.

TheOcularMan · September 5, 2019

On 9/1/2019 at 5:37 PM, Fosh612 said:

I am planning to do a small project which the title states. I would like to use Arduino uno because I am somewhat familiar with it.

this was a post I did two months ago so I want to revisit this. I had no progress due to work. Anyway, my question isn’t how I code but what I need. Someone posted the fastled which seem nice. My assignment is to just control colors and speed of the blinking effect. Will I have to get a breadboard and connect it through that? I am just looking for a way to simply connect the light strip with everything the Arduino board and computer simply. I just don’t want the extra trouble and prices for more components. Probably a dumb question but I am new. Sorry for long post. Thank you.

Hi, saw your post while I was browsing the forum a few days ago. I started a project to eventually replace my cheap ebay controller. Its still a work in progress, but here's a link RGBcom. I plan on doing a better write up in the future, complete with hardware bits and connections. Feel free to clone it, It compiles and runs, tag me if you have question. Just note, this is the brains, you still need mosfet's of something to handle the high current load as stated above.

TheOcularMan · September 7, 2019

On 9/1/2019 at 5:37 PM, Fosh612 said:

<snip>

I am just looking for a way to simply connect the light strip with everything the Arduino board and computer simply. I just don’t want the extra trouble and prices for more components. Probably a dumb question but I am new.

No question is dumb, but the type of question determines what answer ya get.

Read this stuff.

Based on the info, grab 3 IRLB8721's and wire them up per the diagram.

Spoiler

This is the simplest and cheapest way to go about driving a strip like that. To errrr on the side of caution, hook an external 12v source up to the strip, I don't think the onboard regulator can take that much stress. It may also be a good idea to add a 100ohm gate resistor and a 100k pull down on the gate. Trial and error will help. If you want efficiency and speed look into a gate drivers, they come in quad's so you should have an extra channel (this is what I'm checking out for my build).

You can get the mosfets from adafruit, but digikey has them cheaper, IRLB8721. As for as a bullet proof design, idk... I'm at a loss for the moment, I'm going to keep looking.

I also updated that arduino project repo above, it looks like code now haha. Good luck with your project, post your solution, I would like to see it finished.