New on Lectronz: Fibonacci64 Micro HDR 40mm 64 RGB LEDs No Touch https://lectronz.com/products/fibonacci64-micro-hdr-40mm-64-rgb-leds-no-touch by @jasoncoon
#Displays #LEDs #Lights

And now a followup on how to actually update a row of LEDs efficiently, using bitplanes:
https://aykevl.nl/2026/01/bitplanes/

#EmbeddedSoftware #firmware #hardware #leds #Charlieplexing

Now in stock on Lectronz: Lux Lavalier - Wearable Light Art Pendant https://lectronz.com/products/lux-lavalier-wearable-light-art-pendant by @jasoncoon
#Displays #LEDs #Lights

Now in stock on Lectronz: Fibonacci64 Micro HDR - 40mm disc with 64 RGB LEDs https://lectronz.com/products/fibonacci64-micro-hdr-40mm by @jasoncoon
#Displays #LEDs #Lights

New on Lectronz: Duonacci Pendant: Green and Blue LED Necklace https://lectronz.com/products/duonacci-pendant-green-and-blue-led-necklace
#LEDs #Lights #Wearables

@nielso fast alles, was man bei Hornbach hinsichtlich Leuchten und Leuchtmitteln bekommt ist CRI80-Ramsch.
Quelle: ich selbst - habe mal viel zu viel Zeit in nem Hornbach mit nem Barcode-Scanner auf dem Smartphone und der #EPREL-Website verbracht:
https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/lightsources

In dieser Hinsicht: Schande über #Hornbach bzw Baumärkte generell und ein Hoch auf die @EUCommission

#CRI #LEDs

New vid! #PCBs I made in 2025, part 1: LED charm ✨
https://www.instagram.com/reel/DTH1NuelDig

Finally pulled together a prototype with this little board – one of my new #Charmware set, reviving the series of modular tech #jewelry bits I started back in 2018. Been dreaming of assembling these with elytra and bike-leather, and the day finally came... The board still needs some tweaks (smaller switch etc.), but with my fixed-up #KiCad workflow, those will be a snap. 😸

// #Maker #LEDs #WearableTech

Now in stock on Lectronz: Rechargeable Supercapacitor Fibonacci Earrings https://lectronz.com/products/rechargeable-supercapacitor-fibonacci-earrings-2
#LEDs #Lights #Wearables

New on Lectronz: Fibonacci512 HDR https://lectronz.com/products/fibonacci512hdr by @jasoncoon
#Displays #LEDs #Lights

Cheap Max7219 Chainable LED Matrix

I can’t resist a cheap LED matrix, so when I stumbled across these 8×8 LED matrix displays with a Max7219 driver LED in this chainable form-factor for, get this, less than £1.50 each from electrodragon.com … well, I had to give them a go.  It is a relatively simple circuit board to build, so there are very minimal instructions, but there are still a couple of gotchas that might catch out a beginner, so I’ve put together these notes whilst putting them together.  By the way, I ordered 9 so I could eventually form a 24×24 LED square (3×3 of the matrices).

I started with the headers, then the discrete components, finally the chip.  The only thing to note is the polarity of the electrolytic capacitor (of course – look for the + on the circuit board) and the orientation of the chip itself.  Also note that ‘pin 1’ of the LED matrix sockets are indicated by a square pad in the top right of the circuit board (as seen from the top, with the writing the right way up).  It is worth fiddling with the electrolytic prior to soldering to try to ensure it doesn’t poke out over the top edge of the circuit board – although if it does, if physically mounting boards next to each other, it will quite happily overlap into the next board.

The design suggests that all the header pins face upwards and that the jumpers are used on the top of the board to chain them together.  however, I didn’t really want to have to take off the LED matrix every time I wanted to change how it was linked, so I opted to solder the connecting header pins to the underside of the board as shown.  It also gets around the issue they describe on the product webpage about the LED matrix not really fitting snugly on the board.  Mine fits nice and tight.

So all that remains is to add the LED matrix.  As I said, pin 1 should be indicated on the matrix itself and is indicated on the circuit board by the square pad near the electrolytic capacitor.

In terms of making the thing work, it is relatively simple to connect up:

• CLK – D2
• LD – D3
• DIN – D4
• VCC – VCC
• GND – GND

Of course when chaining with jumpers DOUT goes to the next LED DIN.  The other pins pair up.

There is a lot of arduino code for these types of driver chips – start here – http://playground.arduino.cc/Main/LEDMatrix.

I used the code from here to test my setup – http://playground.arduino.cc/LEDMatrix/Max7219 – as written this assumes the same pinouts as I describe above (i.e. CLK, LD, DIN on digital pins 2, 3 and 4).

You just need to set the number of chained displays at the top:

int maxInUse = 9;

(in my case) and get to work playing.  The routines in the library provide a simple interface to setting rows on a single or all of the chained displays.  maxSingle is meant for when there is just one display.  maxAll displays the same value on all displays in the chain.  maxOne will target a specific display (starting with display number 1 up to your last – 9 in my case).

As you can perhaps see, this is using an Ardunio nano.  With 9 boards cascaded, getting the PC to recognise the nano was plugged in was sometimes a problem – it often gave me a ‘there is a problem with your USB device’ error on Windows 7.  It was fine with lesser numbers of matrices, so I guess there is a power issue with the nano struggling with the USB setup and initialising all 9 LED matrices at the same time.  Temporarily disconnecting VCC from the LEDs when plugging in the USB seems to solve the issue for me.

As I eventually want to be setting an entire row of LEDs in a larger grid, the maxOne function is a little wasteful as it has to shunt null values to all of the LED displays you are not targeting – so calling it 9 times means writing 81 bytes out across the DIN pin just to actually set 9 bytes.  Consequently it is possible to optimise it a little if you want to write an entire row to all displays in the same transaction.

Of course, if you refer back to the LedMatrix page, there are many other libraries that will do most of this for you, including Marco’s very complete library for scrolling text displays – http://parola.codeplex.com/ – but I quite like being able to see what the low-level code is actually doing to make things work.

I’ve therefore added a maxRow function as follows:

// Note: Sloppy code warning!// There is no checking here that *col is an array of// the correct length - i.e. maxInUse//// It should be defined and used as follows://    byte row[maxInUse];//    // fill each byte of row with your data - row[0], row[1], row[2], etc.//    // using one byte for each matrix in sequence//    maxRow (1, &row[0]);//void maxRow (byte reg, byte *col) {  int c=0;  digitalWrite(load,LOW);  for (c=maxInUse; c>=1; c--) {    putByte(reg);    putByte(col[c-1]);  }  digitalWrite(load,LOW);  digitalWrite(load,HIGH);}

But I haven’t mentioned the absolutely best feature of these little boards yet.  And that is that they are almost exactly the same dimension as a 4-stud Lego brick.  This means it was trivial to make a simple enclosure to hold my 3×3 grid and the nano.

I now have a really cool game-of-life running on my 24×24 LED grid.  At this price, I have another 8 on order so I can take it to a 4×4 grid (with one spare).

Kevin

#arduino #ledMatrix #leds #lego #matrix #max7219

New on Lectronz: Flipper Zero - IR Board Eye Of Horus https://lectronz.com/products/flipper-zero-ir-board-eye-of-horus
#LEDs #Sensors #Technology

New on Lectronz: Flipper Zero Board IR DTECHBlaster https://lectronz.com/products/flipper-zero-board-ir-dtechblaster
#ESP32 #LEDs #Technology

This is what happens, if you leave me alone with an #ESP32, a #WS2812 LED-Strip and some time.
I have not yet implemented it to display maintenance times. I believe #UptimeKuma will internally handle that as up and note the maintenance somewhere else, but I'm not fully sure.

#tinkering #homelab #diy #leds #idea

Since it'll take some time for the PCBs to arrive, I decided to make a #prototype on #perfboard. It works fine, and I can test my programs using it. Turns out an #ATtiny814 is good enough for the task.
The #WS2812B #SMD #LEDs are very bright, though, and reducing brightness also reduces the possible color range.
The different color shadings are not very distinguishable, yet. I might have to adjust the color palette.
#diyelectronics #soldering

Then an LED matrix with a difference: it's built as a freestanding circuit sculpture. There's an ATtiny85 built in for standalone use, or you can disable that and hook it into an external microcontroller.

https://www.hackster.io/news/patrice-godard-s-circuit-sculpture-is-a-standalone-or-peripheral-led-matrix-pcb-free-079d9c7969e8

#Technology #Makers #LEDs #Art #News #Hackster

I thought the preview would include the image. Here's the image. This shows red, green, and blue, as functions of hue, along with the ramps that shape them. See the gist for full details.

#LED #LEDs #graphics #EyeCandy #LCD

Let in a little light.

LED turtle (nets on a low bush) in a pond feed by a waterfall.

#timelinecleanse #turtle #pond #LEDs

Now in stock on Lectronz: 1" Fibonacci32 - 25.4mm disc with 32 SK6805-1515 https://lectronz.com/products/inch-fibonacci32 by @jasoncoon
#Displays #LEDs #Lights

I use fully saturated HSV colors a lot in my visual distractions. I finally worked out a concise way to convert hue to RGB values.

https://gist.github.com/kbob/01a5ea40cada3ec07be04b47ff35d253

#LED #LEDs #graphics #EyeCandy #LCD

New on Lectronz: LED Ring Earrings (36 LED) https://lectronz.com/products/erring-ring-rgb36 by @ayke
#LEDs #Wearables #STM32