The LED Artist - blog » RGB

Colour Night Joule Thief kit

The LED Artist — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:47:05 +0000

Colour(Color) Night Joule Thief kit and PCB are available. Please use the buttons below to purchase.

Detailed information and building instructions are here: http://www.instructables.com/id/Colour-Changing-Night-Joule-Thief/

*** Purchase Here ***

“Colour Night Joule Thief” LED Mood Light

The LED Artist — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 07:32:31 +0000

Detailed information including building instructions: http://www.instructables.com/id/Colour-Changing-Night-Joule-Thief/

Aurora 9 bar

The LED Artist — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 23:08:44 +0000

Since the introduction of Aurora 9×18, I received many requests for the kits and PCBs. I’m still quite undecided about making those available for a few reasons. However I really want other LED lovers (ok that sounds too much :) to be able to build one themselves.

So I came up with Aurora 9 bar. It’s a bare essential version of Aurora 9×18. In fact the circuit is almost exactly the same (with a lot less number of LEDs of course). Even the firmware is essentially the same. So it has the same super smooth color fades as Aurora 9×18.

You can now build Aurora 9 bar yourself! Details are at Instructables:
http://www.instructables.com/id/Aurora-9-bar-The-Essence-of-Aurora/

Aurora 9×18 on Instructables

The LED Artist — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 04:51:23 +0000

Aurora 9×18 is now on Instructables! Which means you can learn how to build one of those yourself!

http://www.instructables.com/id/Aurora-9×18-RGB-LED-art/

Aurora 9×18 Teaser Video

The LED Artist — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 04:01:21 +0000

I thought it’s time for me to start putting some effort in creating better presentation of the work I do. Here are two versions of video that showcase Aurora 9×18.

Aurora 9×18 assembled

The LED Artist — Sat, 04 Jun 2011 15:11:28 +0000

Just finished assembling Aurora 9×18. Based on the prototype aurora 9, this unit has 18 tri-color LEDs in each of 9 circles.
Because of the number of components (162 LEDs), assembly was quite a chore. Tri-color LED has pins that are close together, very narrow for a through-hole component. Solder bridging can happen very easily. (I’ve been soldering for over 30 years now, and thought I had good enough skill to get through the soldering, but I had a bit of a struggle…)

Now it’s done, and the hard work is worth it. It’s beautiful… LEDs are controlled in 9 groups of 18 each. Each group of LEDs are forming a circle. Each RGB component is controlled by PWM, with effective resolution of about 13 bits.

The colors produced by those LEDs are beautiful, the transitions between colors are smooth. To me this is fascinating…

Here’s the schematic if you are interested.

Aurora-mini is here

The LED Artist — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 19:50:31 +0000

The same circuit posted before has made into a real unit.
Very smooth color changes (gamma-corrected 256 level PWM on each color/LED).

> Updated version is here.

Aurora 18 prototype

The LED Artist — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 22:26:13 +0000

New project using RGB/tricolor LEDs. Tricolor means triple the number of LEDs to control – more load on the processor. I decided to move up to 16 bit PIC, 24F series for the increased processing speed (MIPS) and memory. 16 MIPS and 4 KB of RAM and still had to resort to multiplexing RGB channels. 18 LEDs color/brightness individually controlled in gamma-corrected 8 bit levels (equivalent to about 14 bit linear PWM).

Countless software tweaks later I’m getting 200 Hz refresh rate. Hard to tell from the video, but the fades are truly smooth.

The circuit is quite simple. Besides the PIC and the LEDs, 6 transistors and a few resistors & caps. No current driver ICs or shift-registers.

Here’s the schematic for anyone interested. LED to PIC connections can be rearranged – mine was dictated by the PCB layout. I wanted to route the I/O pins to the nearest LED on the PCB (being fabricated right now – stay tuned for the update).

Aurora 18 Schematic