Programmable 24 x WS2812 RGB LED Ring – 85.8mm Diameter

This Neopixel ring is made up of 24 fully controllable RGB LEDs, each able to create 256 shades of colour, giving an astonishing range of over 16 million colours. Communication runs over a One-Wire serial data line, allowing control from microcontrollers such as Arduino, PIC, mbed and others.

The refresh rate can be set as you like, for smooth and absorbing light effects. Experiment by daisy-chaining several rings to build a wide variety of lighting effects. The supply required is 5 Vdc.

Warning! because the protocol is very sensitive to timing, it needs a real time microcontroller such as an AVR, Arduino, PIC, mbed, etc. It cannot be used with a Linux-based microcomputer or with a microcontroller such as Netduino or Basic Stamp. The Adafruit NeoPixel library (www.adafruit.com), freely available, is specific to Arduino.

Neopixel is essentially a driver and its RGB LED built into a single SMD package, which allows LED-by-LED control. The data line used to talk to Neopixel LEDs, and so to the strips, is similar to the One-Wire type. Neopixel LEDs are designed to run on 5 volts; communication runs at up to 800 kbps. The Neopixel command protocol sends groups of three bytes in a 24 bit string, each of which holds the lighting state of one primary colour (first the eight bits of green, then those of red and finally those of green).

• NeoPixel Library