RGB LED pin

[TheSupertecnology]

here in mexico there are rgb leds that have a very small integrated circuit inside connected to the little wires that have the different colors, inside the led too, and you just have to induct a cc in the led and it will changes its colors in a secuence, and then it will blink too. it´s so amazing!

[FlyByPC]

@TheSupertecnology I've seen those. I like the ones with four wires, since you can control those manually. It is amazing how small a control circuit can be, though.

[floskit]

can you give the source code please?

[AlexM19875]

RGB? White?!

[FlyByPC]

If you turn all three LED elements (Red/Green/Blue) on, it appears more or less white.

[AlexM19875]

Yes, I know but you have red/white/blue instead. why?

[AlexM19875]

@AlexM19875

Aha! sory Iread wrong. You had it SET to red/white/blue. I believed you used red/white/blue insdead for rgb.

hehe, sory my bad

[FlyByPC]

That was the color sequence programmed for this particular application. It can basically do any colors -- flickering orange for Hallowe'en etc. The LED has Red, Green, and Blue elements, but the program cycles through Red (red only), White (red+green+blue), and Blue (blue only). This specific program was for US Election Day 2008...

[joebro391]

I'll assume that the resistance to GPIO3 is was controls the rate of flash?? and where did you get the micro controller?? thanks a lot. -Joe

[FlyByPC]

The microcontroller is a PIC12F683; they're available from Digikey, or from Microchip Direct. Just Google for the part, and you'll find it. The 12F683-I/P is the DIP-8 part. The resistor on GPIO3 is simply to pull the reset pin high; the light pattern and speed is all done in software.

[joebro391]

@FlyByPC ah, so there's no way to change the flash-rate?? I haven't looked at the data sheet yet, but there's no way to add resistance between discharge and output pins and slow it down that way?

[FlyByPC]

Sure, there is. You change the settings in software. It doesn't work like a 555; rather, you turn the RGB elements on or off, wait a number of microseconds or milliseconds, etc. For now, it's just displaying red-only, then all-three, then blue-only -- but it can do any color combination. It could be made to read the resistance and change the speed based on that, but the current program just runs a fixed display. (It could easily do flickering orange for Hallowe'en, red-and-green for xmas, etc.)

[joebro391]

@FlyByPC ah, i gotchya, i for some reason i was associating it with an IC. I'm gonna get into the arduino microcontroller soon, so i'll learn haha. thanks for all the info. -Joe

[FlyByPC]

The 12F683 is actually (like all microcontrollers) a miniature 8MHz computer-on-a-chip...

[AlexM19875]

I know, you can do like 16 777 216 colors. I have been working whith RGB my self.

I working on a univeral experemetal board for microcontrollers and it have 4 RGB LEDs for indications. So when the board is in a box with a a window it will be lit up in colors.

[lvecsey]

a nice variation would be say just two colors, blue and green, and then have it pulse with timing info from a heart rate monitor, lol

[FlyByPC]

Given input from the heart rate monitor, this would be pretty straightforward; it can be easily programmed for almost any color. Right now it's set to red/white/blue for Election Day, but I'll probably switch it to red and green for the holidays.