Hello,
I am new to the community and I have always wanted to play with an arduino. I have had this project on my mind for a while now and I would truly appreciate any guidance/advice on the best way to approach my project in mind. As I have mentioned I am a Noob to Arduino but im not at all afraid to get my hands dirty or learn new things.
Project:
I am trying to make multiple Diamond cut out of plexiglass that is .5" thick, 30 total. Each having the dimensions of roughly 3.5" width x 6.0" height. In this diamond I would like to insert possibly 3 leds per side which would mean having 12 leds in the diamond shape. Firstly I am debating between using these two 5mm LED RGB Diodes
First LED Choice which has Max forward voltage. 1.8 - 3.4V and Max Forward Curent 20MA
Second LED Choice which has Max forward voltage. 3.0 - 3.4V and Max Forward Curent 20MA
Secondly I would like each diamond to be individually addressable, meaning the 12 LED's on the diamond are all the same color and not individually different. The problem that I am running into is trying to figure out how to power/control 30 panels having a total of 360 LEDs in such a way. As I have mentioned I am a newbie and would truly appreciate the help. I have posted a picture of the diamonds for reference.
I would suggest that you have a look at the WS2812 type of RGB LED strips. They feature a controller per LED so they are individually controlled. A strip requires 1 digital pin output from the Arduino (versus 2 or more for other control methods). They seem expensive when you first look at them, but upon considering the cost of individual LEDs, wire, resistors and controller chips they become more attractive. Then add in the time to solder 360 X 4 LED leads, even more so. The FastLED library makes controlling the LEDs relatively easy.
groundFungus:
I would suggest that you have a look at the WS2812 type of RGB LED strips. They feature a controller per LED so they are individually controlled. A strip requires 1 digital pin output from the Arduino (versus 2 or more for other control methods). They seem expensive when you first look at them, but upon considering the cost of individual LEDs, wire, resistors and controller chips they become more attractive. Then add in the time to solder 360 X 4 LED leads, even more so. The FastLED library makes controlling the LEDs relatively easy.
Thank you for your reply. I also started looking into the WS2812 strips but I am a little confused on if the leds on a 144/m strip can be controlled separately so leds [1-50] ->red [51-101] -> blue and so on and so forth ? Also what would be the maximum amount of strips I could control with the arduino uno/nano this way?
Yes, they can be controlled separately. You control the brightness (0 to 255) of each color in each LED. So 1-25 could be bright red, 26-50 medium bright red, 51 & 52 yellow, 53 - 60 Fuchsia (what ever that is), 61-90 blue. Individually controllable and any color by mixing the R, G, B LEDs and brightness.
Max number of LEDs
groundFungus:
Yes, they can be controlled separately. You control the brightness (0 to 255) of each color in each LED. So 1-25 could be bright red, 26-50 medium bright red, 51 & 52 yellow, 53 - 60 Fuchsia (what ever that is), 61-90 blue. Individually controllable and any color by mixing the R, G, B LEDs and brightness.
Max number of LEDs
Oh okay that makes much more sense. Thank you!
You can also get them in individual through hole packages which might be easier for you to wire up:-
