Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

Short description:

LED brighter than the starter kit, but not packing the punch Über bright Luxeon, tri-color LED Breakout Kit lets you shine guru. Some of you, in the light of the large, bright and colorful, if you need to throw your project, look no further than tri-color LCD breakout kit. superbrightLEDs blind could brighten it with just about anything! Here we have everything you need here to get you up and running quickly with it.

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

Requirements:

Assembly of the kit to be welded. So, if you already know how to do, please check out these helpful guidelines. In addition, a few tools you will need for assembly:

• Soldering iron
• Solder
• Cutting
• Male header or other connection methods
• (Optional) needle nose pliers
• (Optional) Third Hand

Breakout is a breakout of the tri-color LED that there are many, many ways that you can use or control it. However, following this guide you will find helpful:

• breadboard
• Jumper cables
• arduino
• (Optional) multimeter or coin cell battery

What does this mean:

Tri-color LED Breakout Kit is a simple very bright LEDs, which can provide more current than the pins of a microcontroller draw kit is designed to control. Each LED LED transistor to switch from a 5V source said. The current limiting resistor as close as possible to their maximum 80mA for each LED is run. It is planned to check out all laid out.

How to use it:

Assembly:

Before starting assembly, check carefully that you have received all the parts. You must have the following:

• 1x tri-color LED breakout PCB
• 1x Super Bright LED - Red 10mm
• 1x Super Bright LED - Green 10mm
• 1x Super Bright LED - Blue 10mm
• 1x 7.5 ohm resistor (to be colored Stripes: Violet, Green, Gold, Gold)
• 1x 6.8 ohm resistor (to be colored Stripes: Grey, Blue, Gold, Gold)
• 1x 20 ohm resistor (Stripes will be colored red, black, black, Gold)
• 3x Transistor 2N3904
• 3x 330 ohm resistor (to be colored Stripes: Orange, orange, brown, gold)

If any part is missing? (Bad SparkFun kitters!) Drop an email to our customer service team. We'll leave them to you as soon as possible.

Okay, let me start building!

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

The PCB occupies the center of a large round and check out the silk screen. This is for your LED. Each of the LED to the long leg holes marked "L" and enter the number of holes in the shorter legs short "S" marked. LED diodes and this is really important because if you turn them back, they will not be installed.

Now you need to figure out which color of each LED. There are several ways to do this:

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

1) Insert a coin cell battery and possession of the coin cell battery in the battery, and on the lead (anode) to the positive side of the leads. LED should light up, indicating its color. If you do not use language that battery is touching both sides of the LED leads, make sure that the battery is correctly oriented and. Outputting a small amount of current to the battery, so do not worry, once these are put together are only able to be bright!

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

2) A good multimeter diode test settings (sometimes combined with the continuation of the trial) that you would like to use your LED light show. Although only the smallest bit multimeter does not worry that the LED shows you the best dim!

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

 3) Orange, Orange, Brown, Gold) and 5V: a 330 ohm resistor (with colored stripes grab one sequence. Connect as shown. We are used to the current limit of 330 ohm resistor, to make sure we do not destroy the current considerably less LED If you want to be that. So, again, do not worry, your leadership will be brighter once this is put together!

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

Now that you know what is the color, which leads them to the right place, and those little buggers biting clip. Make sure the flat beds pushed against the PCB. They will take a little push to get all the way through.

Then, it is time for transistors. This transistor is used because of their maximum brightness LED will be running around 80mA. More than a typical microcontroller output pin, can, Arduino like. So, we use transistors to switch on and off the LED. Transistor line up with their footprints. They should get as much as possible close to the board a little wiggling. Then solder the leads and clips.

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

Third, resistors. There will be a color code to indicate the value of each resistor. You read the color codes or you can use a multimeter to measure the value of prevention. It is important to match the resistors PCB with their proper spots. The number printed on the PCB using the first letter of each color to match or use of the band. Do not worry about the direction in which they are inserted, it is not important. This kit for the resistor color codes are given below:

7.5 ohm (purple, green, gold)

6.8 ohm (gray, blue, gold)

20 ohm (red, black, black)

330 ohm (orange, orange, brown, gold)

Finally solder a connector. We prefer to use a breadboard for the male headers, but you, of course, just about anything, please make use of the free.

Hardware:

Now, let's get this thing shining! If you like a simple breakout board LED behavior of the transistors that are pre-configured for use with low current digital signal. Just make sure that your power supply cable to a microcontroller 240mA (80mA * 3 LEDs) can provide incredibly easy. Most of these can easily wall warts and USB sources. Now, your Arduino wire has been shown to:

Tri-Color LED Breakout Quickstart Guide

Firmware:

Now everything has been fitted, we're ready to handle it with our Arduino. First, you need to install if you already have the Arduino IDE. The LED control will allow us to load our example code. Check out this tutorial if you need help to install more Arduino IDE.

Notice that we PWM pins on the Arduino wired? In this view, an impact 'dimming' to produce, our LED flicker on and off very quickly, allowing faster than the eye. Check out the following example code for a demonstration:

 /*
 Tri-Color LED Breakout - An example sketch for the Tri-Color LED Breakout
 By: Hilary Hoops
 SparkFun Electronics
 Date: 6/23/11
 License: CC-BY SA 3.0 - Creative commons share-alike 3.0
 use this code however you'd like, just keep this license and
 attribute. Let me know if you make hugely, awesome, great changes.
 */
  
int RedLED = 9;     // LED connected to digital pin 9 (pwm pin)
int GrnLED = 10;    // LED connected to digital pin 10 (pwm pin)
int BluLED = 11;    // LED connected to digital pin 11 (pwm pin)
int LED[3]={RedLED, GrnLED,BluLED}; //an array to make it easier to cycle though 
the LED colors

void setup()  { 
  //Set pins as output pins
  pinMode(RedLED, OUTPUT);   
  pinMode(GrnLED, OUTPUT);   
  pinMode(BluLED, OUTPUT);   
} 

void loop()  {
  //Fade each LED in and out individually. Possible range is 0-255
  for(int i=0; i<3;i++){ //Cycle LED color
    //Fade in
    for(int fade=0; fade<=255; fade+=5){
        analogWrite(LED[i], fade); 
        delay(30);
    }
    //Fade out
    for(int fade=255; fade>=0; fade-=5){
        analogWrite(LED[i], fade); 
        delay(30);
    }
  }
  //Fade all the LEDs in and out 
  //Fade in
  for(int fade=0; fade<=255; fade+=5){
      analogWrite(RedLED, fade); 
      analogWrite(GrnLED, fade); 
      analogWrite(BluLED, fade); 
      delay(30);
  }
  //Fade out
  for(int fade=255; fade>=0; fade-=5){
      analogWrite(RedLED, fade); 
      analogWrite(GrnLED, fade); 
      analogWrite(BluLED, fade); 
  nbsp;    delay(30);
  }
}

That's all you need to get your lights shining.

Resources:

Tri-color LED Breakout Kit product page

LED's basic commentary

LED current limiting resistor

Vs. anode cathode

Conclusion:

Enjoy your new LED! If you have any problems, feel free to contact technical support Take support@sparkfun.com SparkFun