[Lab] how to control several RGB LEDs with Arduino

[Justin Hornosty]

jslei033 at uottawa.ca writes:

> My prefered chip is the TLC5940: it cam be daisy chained, you can vary each pin's brightness, and it controls 16 outputs at once. You can also use the WS2801 family of chips (some control one LED per chip, some control many LED per chip).
>
> You're on the right path, thinking of pwm extenders.
>
> The ws family is cheaper but the tlc are more heavy duty.

+1 for the TLC5940. It's a bit pricey but works well and what I used for
my 4 channel ambient light controller.

I believe TI has free samples in through hole/DIP.

Depending on how many LEDS you need to drive you might get away with a
Teensy3.1 which has 12 PWM pins. (Teensy 3 has 10)

The WS28** stuff is pretty interesting. I bought a couple led strings a
while back I haven't get around to playing with.

PJRC wrote up some libraries for talking to these things and did a
pretty impressive
display. https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/td_libs_OctoWS2811.html

-jjrh.