Hello Im planing to renovate my room and then im going to paint the walls white and put about 20 RGB leds in the roof that will light on the wall, then i can have anycolor on the wall i want! Is it posible to make it easy to controll them by the parallelport on the computer or is it any other way? Sorry for my bad english //Eskil
erm....a little more info would have been usefull. What Port? Can you Program? Sperate Control For each? Which LEDS? (need pinnouts)
Unless you get luxeon leds of something, they are not going to be bright enough. WHat leds were you thinking on getting?
I dont really know yet.. Im thinking about the Luxeon leds but arent they very expencive? Otherwise im going to go with normal 5mm RGB leds in groups of 4 or somethink... like this... ----OOOO----OOOO----OOOO----OOOO----OOOO---- Were can i buy cheap RGB leds, both 5mm and luxeon? //Elias
found this while looking for information on how to build transformers / jacob's ladders. if you've got any info to trade, I'd appreciate it.
Hello This is what i found on the net: http://www.rgbled.org/ http://bigasterisk.com/pixel/FrontPage http://www.led-effects.com/0005_adhara_led_spots.php I havnt read everything on the pages... But i think im going to begin with a smaller one like the one in youre link... Ive also asked some companies if they will send me some free samples of their RGB led modules...(youst the lamp...) //Eskilade <---HAHA---
It's not exactly what you seem to be looking for, but it's pretty close. I saw this awhile ago on hackaday.com, where someone took a bunch of red, green, blue, and UV LEDs and hooked them up to some controller circuits so he could customize the colors of his room. Here's the link, w/directions on how to make it, hope this helps LED Bedroom
HEHE THANKS SO MUCH!! I will start by building that device! It was very easy... I think im going to do the PC control later when im more skilled //Elias
You can also have a look at the MIT dance floor project. It has info on control etc http://web.mit.edu/storborg/ddf/index.html
If I were you, I would go of 3 leds per unit: A red one, a green one and a blue one. Because it will give more light then one rbg led, and usually is cheaper. And how 'high-tech' do you want to go? With a couple of resistors, variable resistors, fets and a power supply. You can make a simple control unit Or you can go for a mircocontroller with pwm so you take make the color fade into each other.
I'm going to suggest my own solution which uses serial (RS232) commands: http://www.wahoo-wa.net/PICprojects Feel free to ask me any questions that you may have. -special [k]
I don't like the LED bedroom schematics, using the linear redgs in that fasion cause the regs to get hot. I'd suggest using the parallel port to drive the LEDS and control them using pulse width modulation. It's fairly easy to program that sort of thing on the parallel port. To drive a large number of LEDs, I'd suggest usingan opticoupler, and using the output of the opticoupler to drive some sort of power transistor either FET or BJT depending on the info you can find, the parts you can find, and what circuits you are comfortable with.
Okey Do you have any page or picture that describes how i build the electronics? I dont have any programing skills at all (exept html) is there any readymade programs or can somebody help me making my own? //Elias
take a look here: http://www.epanorama.net/circuits/parallel_output.html In their example circuits, you may want to have 1 2n2222 drive another in an arrangement called a darlington pair. If you are really particular, there are LED driver like this one. But that one only does 350mA, and I have had 2n2222s source nearly an amp of current. Not all are rated to this level, but most will do better than 350mA. http://ece-www.colorado.edu/~mcclurel/led_driver_circuits.pdf Circuit B is a fairly standard arrangement, just put the LEDs and current limiters in parallel connected to the single transistor untill the combined curent is 25-50% under the max the transistor can handle. If you use a high voltage source, like 12 volts, you can even put some LEDs in series, and connect those 'strings' into parallel branches. The current is the important thing here. If you use cheap parts like the 2n2222 and some cheap LEDs, you canexperiment a bit and not worry too much if you fry a few parts so long as you are careful with the power supply you use. As for programming the parallel port, sorry, I can't help under Windows.
