Whilst I was building the book nook project I got reading about the WS2811 chips, these are the controller chips behind the NeoPixel RGB LEDs. And that got me wondering if I could make a big version of an RGB LED in a similar way to I'd created one for the jumbo LED a few years back.
The circuit was pretty simple, just add some LEDs and a resistor to the chip. I tried it out on some breadboard and used an Arduino Uno to generate a suitable test sequence.
After looking at a few microscope pictures of the WS2812 (neopixel) I designed a model in FreeCAD. I scaled this up to be 5 0mm x 50mm and printed it out but it still looked tiny. So I doubled it up to 100mm x 100mm, which meant I could use some 10mm LEDs and mount the WS2811 chip too. So I added some holes and printed it out.
The circuit was created "dead bug" style with the chip and LEDs simply glued in place on the back of the board.
It works well enough but I have a nagging doubt in the back of my mind, is it "jumbo" enough?
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