Quote:
Originally Posted by JesseK
I would like to see a better solution for using LED's. Right now LED's paralyze my team with how many choices / setups there are, so usually there's a mediocre attempt at them but never a finished product.
- How do we connect power to the LED's?
- Which LED brand, model, and length do we use?
- Do we really have to care that each light is addressable, seriously?
- To control them do we use an offboard processor, use a Spike, or is there a better way?
Would love to have something simpler that doesn't depend on in-house custom circuitry or an arduino. Plug this 12" LED strip into this device, then plug this device into the PDB and into the RoboRIO using these connectors. Then use this sample code to get going with writing different colors/brightnesses or blinking lights to the LED's.
FWIW, introductory courses in embedded electronics in college were all about blinking LED's, and connection of those circuits to the corresponding code was way more straightforward than the FRC LED situation.
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Thing is, most LED strips are one of two solutions: RGB LEDs, or Addressable WS8211 or similar LEDs. I know teams that I know (I've never used LED Strips on a robot before) use the VRM's 2 Amp 5 Volt rail to power LEDs. I'd recommend one of two models:
Adafruit Dotstar or
Adafruit NeoPixels. These are both addressable. In reality, you don't need addressable really, but it makes controlling them easier, and sometimes it's just nicer to have control of individual sections. The main difference between the two, is that one (the Dotstar) is able to be controlled directly from the RoboRIO, albeit at a higher price. The NeoPixels are much more common, but require a special timing protocol, which must be driven by an Arduino or some other single process device. You may be able to find places that have basically identical strips to these Adafruit brands, just search for WS8211,WS8212,WS8212B, or WK6812 LED strips on Ebay or other shopping website. DotStar strips use a less common APA102 driver on the chips, so you'll find less of these types of strips on places like Ebay.