then connecting the strip (or mutiple strips) to an arduino is trivial. So you could embed 1 atmega1280 (or 2560) per each one of your 25-leds rows, directly on your pcb.īut still, have you an idea of how much wiring complexity, and how much soldering work you'd have to do? If you can find an high power, single color, individually addressable leds, strip. The atmega2560 have 60+ GPIOs (if I remember correctly) this means that you could individually address 60+ LEDs each atmega2560. Or you can make a complex matrix made of rows and columns, but then you might need to introduce extra diodes (ie: extra wiring complexity, extra soldering work) to avoid things like "ghosting".Īnother chance is to connect multiple arduinos on the same I2C/SPI bus and use each GPIO for exactly 1 led only you don't really need the whole arduino, you can use a bare minimal circuit to turn on a big AVR chip, or any other chip with many GPIOs. This channel can be 1-wire (ex: WS2812), Two Wires Interface (aka I2C), or more wires (example: SPI). To power the LED you need a transistor, and the command the transistor you need a command channel. In theory you could buy those chips (or any other 1-wire communication chip) and add the LED yourself but the job is pretty nasty. In some early versions of those strips, the chips aren't embedded and you can see them on the strip. The name WS2812 (and alike) refer to the chip inside the LED, not to the LED the chip is embedded in. Your best bet is to find a single color, high power, leds strip and command it using a uC (ex: arduino). To clarify, I basically want to build something like WS2812 with single color SMD LEDs, so I can have some high quality lighting and still have the programming flexibility like WS2812. What will be the best way to build it and what parts will I need? I'm new to circuit design and all information (like schematics and some basic knowledge) are welcomed. I can ran some LED sequential just by arduino itself but I'm looking for something more efficient for running a large array. It will be run on 12V DC power and expected to be controlled with an arduino. The goal is to have it programmable so I can set it to solid, flashing, sequential, and maybe even pickup a specific color (like only 1st and 3rd row lit up and others dimmed, or having 2nd row running sequential while 3rd row lit up solid). The thought I have right now is to have 3 rows, each with about 15 or 25 same single color LEDs, will be sitting on custom design PCB board. It will be using single color SMD chips in array. I'm trying to build a home-made LED strip (non-RGB).