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Introducing the RainBoard: A simple RGB LED Rainbow fader using an Arduino Uno and a few simple components. Believe it or not, we will control 45-chan...
Before we begin, here is a parts list of everything we will need for this Instructable as well as links to vendors where these items can be obtained. ...
Before we dive in head-first, I thought I would explain a little bit of how this thing works. For those of you that want to get started, you can skip ...
Before we get too far (last time, I promise!), I want to briefly discuss DIP packaging for those of you that are new to electronics. DIP packaging, or...
Time to get building! Plug in your soldering iron to let it heat up while we prepare our components. Each of the RGB LED strips come in a 1 meter le...
Now we need to prepare our breadboards. What we need to do is remove the rails from either side of the breadboard so we can cram them together. If you...
Now we are finally ready to start wiring! Insert the DIP chips (the 74HC595's and ULN2803's) into the breadboard. Simply insert them as show in the im...
Now we will provide power to our shift registers. We will connect pins 16 and 10 to power, and 13 to ground. See images.
Now connect pin 8 of the shift registers to ground. You can wire them straight to ground (like the diagram) or connect them to pin 13 like I did in th...
Now we need to connect pin 15 of the shift register to pin 8 of the ULN2803's. See images.
Now we need to give our ULN2803's somewhere to sink the current of the LED's to. Connect pin 9 of the ULN2803's to ground. Again you can wire them str...
Time to plug in the LED' strips we soldered together back in step 4. Make sure that the pin order is correct. If you are looking at the photo, I have ...
Now to power each of the +12v pins of the LED strips to the second power rail on the back of the breadboard. If you get lost, just flip the board back...
This step is the easiest, while at the same time easiest to mess up. We will be connecting all of the LED's to the ULN2803's. Make sure that you don't...
Now we will connect the shift registers together. Starting with the far right, plug pin 9 to pin 14 of the shift register to its left. See images.
Now for another step that is simple to do yet easy to mess up. We are going to connect pin 12 from the far left register into pin 12 of the register i...
Now for some power. Connect the positive power rail that the RGB LED's are plugged into to the 'Vin' pin of the Arduino. Since we will be powering the...
Finally we will connect the Arduino to the first register (the very far-right one). Connect digital pin 8 of the Arduino to pin 14 of the shift regist...
Now to program the Arduino. The RainBoard's sketch is based around the ShiftPWM Library by Elco Jacobs. I want to take this time to thank him for all ...
We are finally done! Plug the +12VDC power supply into the Arduino's power jack and admire your work! Make sure that the USB cable is NOT plugged in t...
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Posted:
Jan 1, 2012
License:
General Public License
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