I have searched around a while and cannot seem to get a clear answer on this question, hopefully someone here will know, as I feel it's a very straightforward one.
Basically, I have my Arduino (Duemilanovae w/ ATMega 328), and I am using pins 9, 10, and 11 to control the brightness of LEDs on these (Basically creating RGB Colors, specified from a C++ GUI). This is perfectly successful. However, my goal with this project is to move up to controlling longer strings of LED's, in order to create color-controlled mood lighting in a room, using a GUI app on my computer.
I know that the Arduino board itself cannot power any more than a few LED's, and that If I used the Arduino itself to power a 20' strip of LED's, the brightness would probably be so low that it would be useless.
At first, a relay came to mind, perhaps, but those don't do PWM, or at least not well, I've read.
So, does anyone have a suggestion for how to control the brightness of a very long (i.e. 20' or more) strip of LEDs, using the Arduino? Or is this not possible? Also, perhaps my approach is incorrect, in which case, perhaps someone could point me in a new direction?
By putting the LEDs in series, using a higher voltage supply and using a MOSFET as the switch. In some ways it would be just like using the same basic idea as for driving a motor. To do this it would work best if you could use 3 different color LEDs rather than using a 3 color LED. By placing the LEDs in close proximity the colors would blend and the net effect would be the same.
Find RGB LED strips with individual LED control chips/LED http://www.ebay.com/itm/251276536992?hlp=false&var=
Then you send string of bytes out to the daisychained WS2811s and they each control their own LED.
