5050 LED Strips are cheap LED strips which resemble costlier Neopixel strips but the LEDs in 5050 LED Strips are not individually addressable. That means you can use the animations as one coloured LED at one time. You can run the common old animations such as change of colour, dimming effect etc. But we can not run tricky animations such as chase. 5050 LED Strips are a good choice for interior decoration and similar situations where we need continuous light. The entire strip has the same effect and colour, this is an analogue strip. The 5050 it’s the size of the led 5mmx5mm. Unlike Neopixel strips, these 5050 LED Strips lack the ground pin and there are a total of four connecting pins:
- Pin for red
- Pin for green
- Pin for blue
- Vcc or +ve
The required voltage differs and the 5V variant is easy to power (when used with Arduino UNO or ESP32). There are 12V and 24V variants. You’ll need additional hardware, namely three output MOSFETs for each R, G and B channel (these strips use a lot of power). You can use :
- IRF540N MOSFET (you can use 5V or 12v strips with it)
or
STP16nF06L MOSFET
or
S8050 NPN transistor
or
BC337 NPN transistor - Three 1k resistor
Avoid using TIP120 as they are a bit old and inferior compared to a proper MOSFET.
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You can measure the current draw of your 5050 strips on full white (it should be about 1.5Amps/Meter) and see if it divided by 3 is lower than the maximum current in the transistor datasheet. Whatever you use, the circuit diagram will be like this:
(The above circuit diagram is by how2electronics.com)
If you are using Visual Studio Code & platform.io set up then use this project:
1 | https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED |
In this file :
1 | https://github.com/Aircoookie/WLED/blob/main/platformio.ini |
For ESP32, comment out the existing default_envs, and remove the semicolon from the default_envs line that mentions esp32dev. Follow their guide.
If you want to just run a test, then you can use this code written by how2electronics.com:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 | #define RED_PIN 6 #define GREEN_PIN 5 #define BLUE_PIN 3 // # of milliseconds to pause between each pass of the main Arduino loop #define Loop_Delay 30 //brightness level of each colour (0..255) int Brightness_R; int Brightness_G; int Brightness_B; //fade step counter for LED cycle through off (510 steps), fade on (255 steps), // on (510 steps), fade off (255 steps) 1530 total steps int FadeStep_R; int FadeStep_G; int FadeStep_B; //number of times LED has completed a full fade cycle // int CycleCountB; // int CycleCountR; // int CycleCountG; //used to establish what values to send to LED strip // int ColorValue; // ===================================== // ARDUINO SETUP ROUTINE // ------------------------------------- void setup() { //Serial.begin(9600); pinMode(RED_PIN, OUTPUT); pinMode(GREEN_PIN, OUTPUT); pinMode(BLUE_PIN, OUTPUT); //set initial strip color. 0(off) to 255(on). can be anything or nothing. //This value is constrained to 0 - 255. any number higher than 255 will be rounded down to 255. // any number lower than 0 will be rounded up to 0. Brightness_R = 0; Brightness_G = 0; Brightness_B = 0; //Set starting fade step position. -764 to -255 = on (brightness level is 255) // -254 to 0 = fading on (this number *-1 = brightness level) // 0 to 510 = off (brightness level is 0) // 511 to 765 = fading off (this number - 510 = brightness level //must each be 510 steps apart for smooth color pauses. //if pauses removed by commenting out or removing ColorValue if statements and rplacing //with setLEDS (Brightness_R, Brightness_G, Brightness_B); ,which I've already done, these number //can be any value from -764 to 765 in any combantion, likely making many unplesant fade patterns, //but also with many possibilities for interesting patterns. If all values are 510 steps apart //the results will ROY G BIV either forward or backward and starting at different positions //depending on the values given. the farther off the 510 steps of seperationg the further from //ROY G BIV the pattern will move. FadeStep_R = 0; //0 These setting for normal ROY G BIV FadeStep_G = 325; //510 FadeStep_B = 650; //-510 //Set each LED's fade cycle counter to 0 // CycleCountB = 0; // CycleCountR = 0; // CycleCountG = 0; } // ===================================== // ARDUINO MAIN LOOP ROUTINE // ------------------------------------- void loop() { //decrement each LED's fade step counter by one at the start of each loop FadeStep_R = FadeStep_R - 1; FadeStep_G = FadeStep_G - 1; FadeStep_B = FadeStep_B - 1; //fade red LED according to it's fade step counter. if (FadeStep_R == -764) {FadeStep_R = 765;} if (FadeStep_R < 0) {Brightness_R = FadeStep_R * -1;} if (FadeStep_R >= 510) {Brightness_R = FadeStep_R - 510;} // if (FadeStep_R == -510) {CycleCountR = CycleCountR + 1;} //count + 1 for each full fade cycle //fade green LED according to it's fade step counter. if (FadeStep_G == -764) {FadeStep_G = 765;} if (FadeStep_G < 0) {Brightness_G = FadeStep_G * -1;} if (FadeStep_G >= 510) {Brightness_G = FadeStep_G - 510;} // if (FadeStep_G == -510) {CycleCountG = CycleCountG + 1;} //count + 1 for each full fade cycle //fade blue LED according to it's fade step counter. if (FadeStep_B == -764) {FadeStep_B = 765;} if (FadeStep_B < 0) {Brightness_B = FadeStep_B * -1;} if (FadeStep_B >= 510) {Brightness_B = FadeStep_B - 510;} // if (FadeStep_B == -510) {CycleCountB = CycleCountB + 1;} // count + 1 for each full fade cycle // if step counters are intialized 510 steps appart, -510 is the step in each LED's fade cycle // that it will be on full brightness while the other 2 LED's are off. Brightness_B = constrain(Brightness_B, 0, 255); Brightness_G = constrain(Brightness_G, 0, 255); Brightness_R = constrain(Brightness_R, 0, 255); // if (CycleCountB == 8) {CycleCountB = 0;} // if (CycleCountR == 8) {CycleCountR = 0;} // if (CycleCountG == 8) {CycleCountG = 0;} // if (CycleCountR == 2) {ColorValue = 1 ;} //set point for pattern to pause on red // if (CycleCountR > 2) {ColorValue = 0;} // if (CycleCountG == 4) {ColorValue = 2;} //set point for pattern to pause on green // if (CycleCountG > 4) {ColorValue = 0;} // if (CycleCountB == 6) {ColorValue = 3;} //set point for pattern to pause on blue // if (CycleCountB > 6) {ColorValue = 0;} //Send brightness levels to LED strip setLEDS (Brightness_R, Brightness_G, Brightness_B); // if (ColorValue == 0) {setLEDS (Brightness_R, Brightness_G, Brightness_B);} // default to fade pattern // if (ColorValue == 1) {setLEDS (255, 0, 0);} //LED strip red // if (ColorValue == 2) {setLEDS (0, 255, 0);} //LED strip green // if (ColorValue == 3) {setLEDS (0, 0, 255);} //LED strip blue // slow the loop down a bit delay (Loop_Delay); } // send the LED levels to the Arduino pins void setLEDS (int ipR, int ipG, int ipB) { analogWrite (RED_PIN, ipR); // send the red brightness level to the red LED's pin analogWrite (GREEN_PIN, ipG); analogWrite (BLUE_PIN, ipB);} |
