However, by far the hardest part was finding a MOSFET type that was suitable for driving that much current. Sounds like a simple circuit, doesn’t it? Well, that’s because it is. By alternating the intensity of each, you can make any color you want! Each LED assembly actually consists of three smaller LEDs, one red, one green, and one blue. A microcontroller just pulses the MOSFETs open and closed many thousands of times a second, and that controls the intensity of the different color LEDs in the strip. The circuit turned out to be pretty simple. Puzzled that such complicated functionality as changing the color of a LED strip could be implemented by just three MOSFETs, I set out to figure out how the controller worked and how I could replicate that functionality in my designs. However, when I finally did unravel the knot of how the complicated assembly held together and managed to open it up by pressing both sides at once, I was faced with a microcontroller chip and three MOSFETs, a kind of tiny electronic switch. Oh, how I dreamt of complicated arrays of component upon component, whose purpose I would quickly unravel with my trusty multimeter and zest for the engineered. This is partly because, when you’ve bought and used a few components, you start being able to recognize roughly what the parts of a PCB are, rather than thinking about the PCB as “that weird green plate with all the odd-looking bumps that’s inside my devices”.Įver the shrewd observer, I quickly deduced that the little white box with the RF-receiver-looking-bit must be the controller for the strip, and resolved to open it and see the mysteries it might hold. This led to a button that orders food when pressed, a rotary mobile phone, a wifi-enabled room fragrance sprayer (I haven’t written that one up, it was too simple), a self-driving RC car (writeup coming up), etc. When I started tinkering with hardware, I noticed a change: I started looking at common, everyday things around the house and thinking “I bet I could put a controller in that and write an API for it”. If you aren’t familiar with the LED strips, they’re basically a long string of LEDs connected to a controller that usually supports an infrared remote control, which can be used to set the color and intensity of the lights. Ever wish your house lights could flash along with your game? Now they can.Ī while ago, two unrelated things happened: I got one of those cheap RGB LED strips from Ebay, and I became interested in hardware hacking.
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