Controllable RGB LED system for your home or office

Step 3 Construction time!

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By the time you reach this step, you should have completed your design and purchased all your parts. I love receiving boxes of parts to make my great ideas into reality, how about you? Nothing beats putting your hands to work building the design that you crafted in the previous steps.

When I assemble a system, I take my time to double check my construction. I double check components before populating a PCB, I double check connections that are soldered or terminated such as data cables, and I test the system at increments as I go along.

With a large RGB LED system there are many things that can go wrong, so testing as you go along is a good idea. This technique will help you identify problems before they become bigger problems and damage other components. For instance, we tested the
Prop Blade controller before we attached it to the LED Painter driver PCB.

When you start constructing your system, the first thing you should do is assemble your controller and LED driver circuits. If you are using a kit like one of ours, great, then the procurement of parts was easy and assembly shouldn't take too long. If you are building your own controller and LED driver this step may take more time. Don't worry though because the effort is worth it when you get the controller of your system working.

When assembling a kit, you should print out the schematic and bill of materials to make sure you use the right components and place the component in the right spot.

When you finish assembling your controller, take the time to power it on and test it. Download a simple program to the controller to verify that the controller works. In our case, we used the Parallax Prop Plug to download software to the Prop Blade.

Once you finish a driver board, power it on to make sure nothing explodes. Once you've passed that test, add a single RBG LED to a channel and attach the driver to your controller. Use a simple program to verify that the controller can control the driver/RGB LED setup. Again, for the Prop Blade and LED Painter we have example programs on our site: Brilldea.com.

Now that you have the electronics done, let's move on to the LEDs!

Comments

[neveroddoreven99]

I'm not sure if I'm completely on the same page as far as controllers go. My band plays our live show to midi clock and were looking to purchase DMX controller software that would allow the programming of a live show to a strict timeline (the songs) while each song being triggered by a midi clock. Can I control this via DMX? If you point me in the right direction I can do the homework myself, I was just wondering if there is software that your using to program the lights in your video, or if this project might be compatible with DMX.

[Brilldea]

Thank you for the questions. I can certainly understand how this instructable has confused you regarding the controller. Thus far, we have mostly sold LED Painters or LED Painter II-8. These are the "muscle" of driving an LED system. But, to go with the "muscle" you need the "brains" that tell it what to do.

The LED Painter or LPII-8 do not directly accept DMX. They need a controller device to interpret the DMX or preprogrammed routines and then tell the "muscle" what to do.

So - in addition to LED Painter or LPII-8, you will need to have a controller. We have tinkered with several different designs, but haven't gotten anything solid to sell. Many of our users though have made their own controller using an Arduino or Propeller Platform or other microcontroller. I'd recommend using a Propeller to receive DMX-512A, and then have the Propeller control a chain of LED Painters or LPII-8.

We have created a library for the Arduino that uses the A6281 IC that is used in the LPII-8. But we haven't done any DMX work with Arduino. We see there are several people that have, however we haven't tested their code to say how well it works.

[neveroddoreven99]

Thank you for the information! Yeah, sadly this is way out of my league. I know how to work with DMX operationally, but not functionally. If you know anyone who would be willing to tackle this for a somewhat reasonable price, we would be very interested.
Actually, one other question. I came across a message board topic created by T.D Sweiter (who on his website says he works with Billdea, which according to this instructable is you) in which he states that he's made a Propeller DMX receiver. Is that simply enough? If I'm using Elation's Compu Show, is it enough that I program a show, send it out to a Propeller/Arduino receiver and run it to you lighting rig from instructables? I keep reading of libraries and code, but everything I actually find seems to be completely hardware based. Would there be additional coding involved?

[Brilldea]

At the moment, there isn't a good off the shelf solution to go from straight DMX512-A to the LED Painter or LED Painter II-8. The Prop Blade was the product for this, but it was still too complicated and costly (and some of the components were becoming difficult to source, thus the reason we discontinued it).

Brilldea/me/T.D. Swieter have developed various libraries for the Propeller (and am working on Arduino Libraries) for DMX512-A receiving. We have also developed libraries for speaking with the LED Painter and the LED Painter II-8. It takes a bit of know-how in programming to point the code and arrays to each other and DIY electronics to marry the two together. Our goal was to cover this gap, but time has gotten away from us on other projects.

Ultimately, you are right, it should be as simple as you program your show and your system sends DMX and then there is hardware to receive the DMX and translate it to the LED Painter. If I can find time to focus on the Arduino DMX library (I know there are others out there, but I've not been comfortable with them) then it would be easy to publish one project that easily accomplishes all this.

[igutekunst]

I am currently working on either an Arduino or PIC based DMX "interpreter" or "controller" that will be able to drive a chain of TLC5940s, or the Brilldia LED Painter, which is based on the same integrated circuits. I'll try to post back here when I have something working, but don't get your hopes up.

A few resources to look at is the Entec Open DMX controller
http://www.enttec.com/index.php?main_menu=Products&pn=70303&show=description

The Arduino TLC5940 library
http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Learning/TLC5940

and the tutorial from FreakLabs about receiving DMX with an Arduino

http://freaklabs.org/index.php/Tutorials/Software/Light-Sequencing-and-Decoding-DMX-with-an-Arudino.html

I believe one would be able to use the DMX receiving code and the TLC5940 library to control the Brilldia LED Painter, or a chain of TLC5940s.

Good Luck

[Brilldea]

I hope your project goes well! Overall, this is a simple project with the right software/hardware. I've sketched our something similar, but each time, for me at least, it came down to I didn't like a particular piece of hardware or software that I was building the system upon, so I would start down the road of creating my own and eventually I get distracted with other work.

Maybe it is time for me to resurrect my past efforts and get something piece together and working!

[EAS2013]

Hello, I am new to LED's and electronics. I really want to build a project very similar to your bookshelf design. I watched your video and did some research but I am still slightly confused as to everything I need. If you could provide additional information on the subject, I will be ready for purchase of parts from you. Thank you for your time.

[Brilldea]

EAS2013 - thanks for your feedback on our tutorial and your enthusiasm to build a system. This tutorial is a bit outdated as it uses our older products. We have had some new products developed, but thus far we are have only released the LED Painter II-8 on our web site. In addition to the LPII-8 you will need a controller and could use any microcontroller such as an Arduino, Propeller, Pic, etc. You will need knowledge though of electronics and writing software for the microcontroller you chose to hook everything together.

[graffix]

I spent quite a bit of time and money dealing with these products and had no success as with other customers.I'd recommend looking else where.

[Brilldea]

Graffix - I'm sorry that you feel this way. We have provided constant support to our customers via e-mail and have seen many customers succesfully install and operate a system. Through feedback such as yours and others we have made improvements to the products to make the system easier to deploy, but so far the improvements have added cost and we are trying to balance that before we release any new products.

[VizualXTC]

I love your bookshelf setup. I work in a club, and something like this would be great. It would put our club one off from the competition. Problem is the initial financial setback of an item like this. Would you possibly know how much this would cost? Thanks for the great instructable.

[Brilldea]

VizualXTC - the cost of the system depends on a couple factors. One of the major factors is how many LEDs you want and how much control you want of them (how many channels). A high quantity of LEDs and a higher quantity of channels adds more equipment, complexity and time to install and test.

A simple system like the living room system can cost a few hundered USD where the system of three LED windows is perhaps two thousand or more. Of course the thing that saves the most money on these projects is that you are doing the install labor. Buying something larger or off the shelf may cost more.

We have a couple new products that we hope to have ready soon that will make these systems a little easier to install. Send me an e-mail or a Private Message if you are interested in learning more. You can also checkout our web site at www.brilldea.com