[tekman1001]

Good Day everyone. Our team has recently purchased a few meters of RGB LED tape and were wondering what the best legal way to drive them was(note that these are for decoration only). I have had quite a bit of experience with arduinos and could easily drive them with the aid of a few mosfets. The idea would be to power the arduino and the strips off a 12v Power distribution channel, and have it be completely independent from the crio. This would be the ideal solution as it would allow us true pwm control for smooth fading and a wide variety of colors. Also the lights would be on whenever the bot had power. From everything I have read this should be legal as it is all just for decoration, am I wrong? If I am wrong what method would you recommend? I read this board that the pwm outputs on the sidecar are not true pwm so they could not be used, is that correct? If neither of those avenues are allowed then should we just use a couple of spikes, that must be allowed, correct? If your team has any past experience your thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.