Custom LED Help

[MDAWG25]

Originally Posted by Belovan

I was wondering what multi-color LEDs teams like 118 use on their robot, and how they control them. We have access to an Arduino, but we are unsure as to how to wire it. Also some tips and tricks for custom 5v LEDs running off PWMs would be appreciated.
Thank you very much,
Alex

Teams that use Multicolor LEDs, such as 118 (Robonauts) or 1629 (GaCo), use these types of LEDs. These LEDs use the SPI bus and allow each Pixel (LED) on the strip to be addressed by a controller, such as an Arduino, and sent a value via the SPI bus thus changing the color of that one pixel but leaving the others unchanged or to make a pattern.

Access to an SPI bus can be obtained by a standard arduino or a C-RIO, WPILib has modules for this. SPI can be tricky though, clock speed, data rate, which register to write too, etc. However, this link goes to a library available to the arduino and makes the communication between the arduino and the LEDs, simple and fast. The library also gives a couple example test code projects.

If you wanted, this does the same thing but is very expensive but simple, and you can achieve the same effect using an Arduino.