Addressable RGB LED strip

posted Jun 17th 2009 5:30pm by Zach Banks
filed under: arduino hacks, led hacks

ledrgb

[Synoptic Labs] stumbled upon an RGB light strip with individually-controllable LEDs. The strip uses 5 volts and is controlled by an HL1606. Because the strips are hard to find, this chip is mostly undocumented and he had trouble driving the strip. He was unable to get it working until he met with [John Cohn], who had previously reverse-engineered the serial protocol. Working together, they released a library for the Arduino to drive the strip. So far, the library only supports fading each LED, the only known functionality. If more strips like these were available, constructing LED matrices would be much easier. Embedded below is a video of the strip fading through the rainbow.

[Related: LED ambient light strips]

Comments [26]

tagged: arduino, HL1606, led, lighting, lightstrip, rgb, serial, synaptic labs

Reader Comments

where oh where can i buy this?

Posted at 6:03 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Joe

Posted at 6:04 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Joe

…. I want one. This article is such a tease :(

Posted at 6:26 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by Arthur

Really nice…I was glad to skim through the code and see how they work. Was surprised to notice that you can’t actually set each color LED to a specific color, they’re either full on or full off, or fading. Would have been pretty easy for the chip makers to use individual registers for each color, like the DM413 in a lot of RGB strings, or the A6281 in the ShiftBrite. So, this strip is really close to the holy grail, but not quite there.

Posted at 6:52 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by macegr

OK… found somebody who sells what appears to be these strips or a variation thereof… http://www.ledlight.com/electronic-flexible-water-proof-led-light.aspx not sure of length, number of rgb leds per meter, or if these have the hl1606. They are closed for the day so I guess those questions will have to wait till tomorrow!

Posted at 7:13 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by gojimi

someone make this talk to DMX and you’ve got a product.

Posted at 7:43 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by dirk

Zach, Xander,
Thanks for posting this.. it was a little Maikerfaire magic ! If you want to see a cool thing to do with these strips, check out the the headband I made http://www.instructables.com/id/Too-cool-Rainbow-Headband/ . (It’s in the Instructables LED contest.. so cast your vote if you like the project !)
-jc

Posted at 9:19 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by johncohn

johncohn,

It seems they already have a controller for this chip with 83 built in patterns?

Could be worth a look.

TBH I know nothing of electronics, but this has me excited, it’s exactly what I want. Would it be possible to power from a computer PSU and implement the algorithm to address less leds (manufacturer says you can cut them off two at a time and tell this to the controller – min 16 max 255 leds addressable).

http://www.coolight-led.com/Products.asp?Id=130

You can email me using my username @gmail.com if you like.

Thanks

Posted at 10:33 pm on Jun 17th, 2009 by williamtold

Um..

http://www.lck-led.com/p506/5M-Digital-Ultra-Slim-SMD-RGB-Flexible-Led-Strip/product_info.html

Posted at 3:00 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by Mark

I live in Shenzhen and often go to the Electronics Market here (HuaQianBei). If anyone is interested in these strips, I’ll be tracking down the factory guys to discuss an order of just a few of them.

If you are interested in getting one just shoot me a message. You can contact me at erikseverin at y a h o o dot com

Obviously, the more items ordered, the cheaper the individual price for each one.

cheers

Posted at 3:05 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by erik

Check out Ikea, they sell LED strips

Posted at 7:16 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by anonymous

@mark:

That looks like the right strip. However one thing that catches my eye is that they say you need 12V to drive the strip. Judging by the video I think that’s a mistake and that the strip itself is actually running at 5V (perhaps the controller uses 12V). I’ve seen addressable strips constructed that use 12V but, in order to use that high of a voltage, the strips have to be built where you can only control every *3* LED’s. I.e. you can’t control each individual LED but only groups of 3 LEDs.

Anybody wanting to order from these guys should make sure to have them confirm that the strip itself uses 5V, otherwise they may be disappointed.

Posted at 9:40 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by xander

@xander

“Forward Voltage for the RGB LED Strip : 5v”

I would probably say its exactly the same?

Posted at 11:34 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by Mark

I was tempted to investigate this idea further but it looks as if you can’t do proper colour mixing, at least the firmware says ‘Full On/Full Off/Colour fade’

I’m currently building an I2C colour string that allows 24 bit colour mixing.

Posted at 11:35 am on Jun 18th, 2009 by Mark

video has been removed by user….

Posted at 12:05 pm on Jun 18th, 2009 by sunjester

So nice… excellent!

Posted at 1:01 pm on Jun 18th, 2009 by Funfrok

wtf? the video’s gone.

Posted at 2:24 pm on Jun 18th, 2009 by googfan

Posted at 2:58 pm on Jun 18th, 2009 by youtube

interesting, might also be possible to make a video wall using these.

Wonder why they don’t just mount the micro under the LED, wafer style. Much more space efficient and tougher to boot.

-A

Posted at 9:56 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by andre

@andre

It would appear to be a 7 colour LED wall, as the led’s can only maintain a static colour if they are fully on or off. (according to arduino firmware. datasheet in japanese doesn’t help)

Posted at 9:58 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by Mark

Ah, sorry about the video snafu. For some reason, youtube corrupted the first few seconds of the video I originally uploaded. As an attempt to fix this I reuploaded the video (which youtube encoded fine) and then deleted the old, corrupted video, breaking the link in the process.

My bad.

Posted at 10:10 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by xander

@mark

You can stop the LEDs in mid-fade by controlling the number of pulses you put on the S-I line. Each pulse steps the fade by 1/128th or 1/64th (depending on the 2X bit in the command that the LED has loaded).

But failing that, there’s nothing stopping you from bit-banging your own PWM as you would a shift register, ignoring the fade commands entirely, provided your chain is short enough and your controller fast enough.

All in all I think there’s a lot of possibility for creatively driving these chains to get more functionality out of them than you would normally think possible. Certainly, there are some pretty strict limitations and you’ll never be able to get full high-bit color mixing control out of them, but I think there’s a lot of creative hack potential if you’re willing to think like an Amiga demo coder.

Posted at 10:19 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by xander

xander,

I can see hack potential if you used bit-bang pwm, but the extra cpus needed is awkward. Perhaps you could try making a message display, 8 * 32 say using 1 cheap cpu per line. You would probably need in the area of 1mhz bit rate (for 24 bit color), so a dsPic running at 40MIPS could work, arduino is a tad slow if you want 24 bit color.

Posted at 10:30 am on Jun 19th, 2009 by Mark

I am a factory guy in Shenzhen,we produce this strip,it is waterproof,with suitable power supply and controller,it could have gradually change,flash,water flow,etc effect

Posted at 12:26 am on Jun 23rd, 2009 by Joe Lee

These strips seem many intended for architectural use or signage. I would find them much more useful for displays if they had a smaller LED pitch–say 100 LEDs per meter or less.

Posted at 9:52 pm on Jun 26th, 2009 by Charles P. Lamb

new workin link
http://www.synopticlabs.com/blog/?p=97

Posted at 8:37 pm on Aug 13th, 2009 by Dr.No.

Addressable RGB LED strip

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