Adafruit Neo Pixel Shields 40 x RGBW Addressable LEDs
- Adafruit 2864, The Adafruit Neo Pixel Addressable LED Shields have had an upgrade & now feature 8 x 5 RGB + Warm White (3000K) 5050 LEDs. The white LEDs are very intense & add a new dimension to your Neo Pixel projects; with the 8-bit PWM you get 32-bits of colour. These seemingly simple gadgets have triggered an amazing array of creative projects, from watches & compasses to steampunk goggles & more. Each shield has solder pads for 5V DC & Gnd, plus data-in & data-out, using just 1 x GPIO pin on your microcontroller. Simply feed the data-out from one shield into the data-in of another to control them both from the same microcontroller (MCU). Since the data protocol has strict timing requirements, Arduino is an ideal choice to drive these shields. For testing purposes it's fine to power the shields using the Arduino's 5V line as long as all the pixels aren't on at the same time. Once you're happy you can write to the shield it would be best to connect an external 5V DC power supply & a 2-way terminal block is included for you to solder on if required. The shields are supplied with the fully assembled Neo Pixel matrix, a strip of 0.1in. pin headers, a set of 0.1in. pitch female headers with long pins & the 2-way terminal block. Adafruit have published a driver library to save you the trouble & let you get on with designing eye catching displays. They have a reputation for the quality of their supporting documentation & you will find their Uberguide to Neo Pixels & their Best Practices guides invaluable. In particular the Best Practices guide will help you prolong the life of your Neo Pixels & avoid common mistakes. Please make sure you use the Neo Pixel RGBW library, the RGB library will give odd results. Adafruit 2864 Neo Pixel Shield 40 RGBW Addressable LEDs (Warm White 3000K)