Maker Faire 2008: ShiftBright RGB LED module

Posted May 8th 2008 8:00PM by Eliot Phillips
Filed under: cons

We made a point to stop by [garrett]'s booth at Maker Faire to to see what he had been working on. You may remember him from his random caps locker shenanigans. He's just recently released the ShiftBright RGB LED module which makes it easy to implement a string of individually addressable LEDs. The module is based on the Allegro A6281 3-Channel Constant Current LED Driver. The driver chip is capable of displaying a billion colors using an RGB LED. The 3x3mm package is mounted to the backside of the board while a bright common-anode RGB is mounted to the front. The modules are designed to be daisy chained together and are individually addressed using a serial interface. You can find Arduino example code on the site and more info on how the item was developed. Read on for close up images.

Reader Comments

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1. Wow that looks sweet, the kinda thing case mod freaks would kill for on thier pc (I know I would lol).

Posted at 9:10PM on May 8th 2008 by Mojo

2. Great idea for a case mod where the color changes depending on the temperature of whatever you wish to monitor. I can just picture computers swimming with different colors as you crank up your favorite game in a dark room.

Posted at 10:24PM on May 8th 2008 by Aero

3. awesome!!

Posted at 10:26PM on May 8th 2008 by tjhow

4. Now if only the driver/interface was incorporated inside the RGB LEDs (and also would have a 1-wire interface), this could be a bit smaller.
If they can place 3 dies on a LED, why don't they add one more for the "blinking"?

Posted at 3:08AM on May 9th 2008 by DarkFader

5. Imagine a case mod that interfaced with the Phillips amBX background lighting system, that would be very cool.

Posted at 7:31AM on May 9th 2008 by larawen

6. Cool images, my favorite.

Posted at 11:09AM on May 9th 2008 by David

7. These appear to be just about the same thing as ThingM's BlinkM's http://thingm.com/products/blinkm.html. I am glad to see more of these types of units on the market, so hopefully they will become more available.. Lots of possibilities with these little guys!

Posted at 12:49PM on May 9th 2008 by OvRiDe

8. It seems a waste of the chip to only be driving a single LED. I got some samples of that chip and it can do 9 outputs, so it would be a great idea to make a taller module with 3 leds on it IMO.

BTW, soldering wirewrap to that chip is a total nightmare! Makes chipping a ps2 look easy in comparison.

Posted at 12:25AM on May 11th 2008 by Richard

9. Oops, my mistake, it was a microchip controller that I was having a play with that had 9 outputs. Realized just after hitting the add comments button. DOH!

Posted at 12:25AM on May 11th 2008 by Richard

10. Similar to blinkm, except these have fewer brains (no standalone mode) and they're 1/3 the price!

Posted at 6:32AM on May 11th 2008 by drewp

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