Cant change LED Module colors

Using Arduino LEDs and Multiplexing
1

Hello community I am new to arduinos and they are very interesting and fun.

I have a pair of LED modules connected to an arduino nano shield and they work, but I can not change there colors to anything unique. For example:

// Works fine which is red
setColor(255,0,0);
//Suppose to be purple but looks red
setColor(80,0,80);

I can change them to to red or green or blue, but not to anything that is a mixture to make up another color such as yellow or orange or purple.

3264×1836 531 KB

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2

So
setColor(0,0,255);
results Blue ?

3

Yes it will be blue.

But using mixed colors to produce something else does not look accurate, sometimes not even close to the intended color.

4

Are all the pins you're using PWM pins? That looks like it would just be using analogWrite() on those pins, but not all pins are PWM capable.

5

Honestly I'm not sure this shield did not come with any diagram. How can I find out?

6

Have you tried a diffuser? Hold some white paper a few mm in front of the LED or rough the surface with very fine sand paper.

7

GodMan:
Honestly I'm not sure this shield did not come with any diagram. How can I find out?

Use a multimeter.

The (red) shield looks like it just makes the pins of the nano available in Uno form-factor. On the Uno, you need pins 9, 10 and 11; those are the only 3 PWM pins on the Uno that are next to each other. It looks like you have shifted the wires by one pin (8, 9, 10); but it's a bit difficult to see.

PS
Please post full code in future.

8

GodMan:
Honestly I'm not sure this shield did not come with any diagram. How can I find out?

The shield is self-explanatory - it has the pin numbers, but it does not have the tilde marks for PWM as does the UNO.

sterretje:
The (red) shield looks like it just makes the pins of the Nano available in UNO form-factor.

Indeed it does, but more usefully, it is for connection of servos or "sensor" modules.

sterretje:
On the UNO, you need pins 9, 10 and 11; those are the only 3 PWM pins on the UNO that are next to each other. It looks like you have shifted the wires by one pin (8, 9, 10); but it's a bit difficult to see.

And that is indeed the problem, but even worse, he has connected the second LED module to pins 1, 2 and 3.

The colour coded wires are cute though!

Moral of the story - if you want to play around with colour on more than one LED, use NeoPixels.