[Markus] noticed a lack of 7 segment LED displays that could show RGB. Like any hacker, he sought to remedy this. The solution he came up with was to basically remove all the electronics from the plastic body of the display. He then mounted new surface mount RGB LEDs in the correct places. This may be a bit messy, and definitely increased the footprint in this layout, but as you can see from the pictures on his site, the final result is quite nice. What uses can you think of for these?
a pinball machine.
Whos idea was it to publish a picture of a colour mod… in black and white?
Other than that.. pretty awesome work, would be cool in an alarm clock!
Eventually wrapping all of this and an smd micro back into the original (or close to original) form factor/package would be really nice.. perhaps i2c com or some other 8/16 pin manageable format
Personally I would have wired it so they all always lit the same color. That way, would have far fewer pins to worry about. Changing the color of the text is much more useful than changing parts of the characters’ color.
Could be useful for monitoring temp; cool colors for lower numbers, warm colors for higher numbers. It would probably make changes easier to recognize at a glance.
Mcgregor: heh.. yeah.. one digit that cycles through hours minutes and seconds flashing them by color.
Aww, it looks like a little caterpillar.
Really, though, I like mre’s idea about the clock. Nothing like being the only one in the room who knows what time it is.
What about AM & PM? Redshift towards midnight, blueshift towards noon? Taking it one step further, what about radar guns? Red if something is accelerating away from you, blue if it is accelerating towards you?
a 2-digit clock. like mre’s except that it does not cycle but simply displays hours in red, minutes in green and seconds in blue all the time. would take some practice to read it, but isn’t that part of the fun?
Well they DO exist in RGB! – Many temp controllers or PID regulators use them for showing alarms/ setpoint overload etc.
markus’ site noted that there was bleed from one segment (when lit) to neighboring segments (when not lit). maybe on a future version he could use some black silicon in lieu of hot glue (looks like hot glue at least)… is there such thing as black hot glue?
Yeah, they make black got glue sticks for this very purpose. Bit more expensive though, dollar or so a stick, minimum.
So just a little question, What kind of soldering technique did you use for so small rgb led?
Awesome, I need a clock with this, especially if it could make waves of color.
Somewhat like the night lights that spin a colored filter in the heat rising from the bulb.
For soldering SMD I just tin the part and the wire separately, then place the wire on the part and touch the iron to them quickly.
I use a 15w radio shack iron, and a pin to hold down the SMD part.
You can put a dressmakers pin in the solder helper’s alligator clip, and then let the weight of the solder helper hold the part down.
“I am pretty happy with the result”
As they should be. that’s really cool!
The first thing I though of was a Tachometer. I could cycle through a few colors, say green when accelerating, yellow to shift, and red at ‘red line’. Maybe even blue when fuel economy is highest.
One could show two characters at one, for example the first in red, the second in blue, and the segments where the characters overlap in purple.
alarm clock with different colors for days of the week.
wallace, that’s a way cool idea. It might give me a headache to look at, but it’s a neat idea. it would make multiple number displays smaller. i like it at least.
I think you can buy these…
Google the words : multi color 7 segment LED
and see what you get.
For example, Genixtek has something: http://www.gtctw.com/LED_DISPLAY.html
How about an alarm clock that displays the outdoor temperature or the daily weather forecast using color? It’d be cool to know what kind of weather to expect as soon as you wake up to turn off the alarm.