Control RGB LEDs with this Android-Arduino Combo-Circuit

Arduino Technology
Control RGB LEDs with this Android-Arduino Combo-Circuit

android-arduino_led_strip-lights

Connect a multicolor LED strip to your smartphone to make a touch-controlled light show! You can attach the color-changing LEDs to the underside of a coffee table, your bike, or anything else you think needs a bit more color.

With our latest Weekend Project we’ll show you how to combine an Arduino, a simple solderless breadboard circuit, and your Android device (which must be compatible with USB host mode) to control a strip of full-color RGB LEDs. We call this project Android-Arduino LED Strip Lights.

image04

The flexi-strip of 60 LEDs in our project can draw a maximum 1.2A when the LEDs are at full brightness. However, the Arduino’s digital pins are only capable of 40mA of DC output. Using a driver circuit built on a solderless breadboard, with the aid of one TIP31 NPN transistor per color, Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) will allow us to draw maximum brightness from our LEDs and color mix using a touchscreen app for Android.

android_ledsc

According to this Arduino Reference Board, PWM is available on pins 3, 5, 6, 9, 10, and 11 of ATmega328-based Arduinos. In the code above you can see we have declared pin 9 for red, pin 10 for green, and pin 11 for blue. For example purposes you can see we have also adjusted the maximum duty cycles to adjust for any color balancing issues.

Watch the video below to see this project in action. If you design a novel use for this project, transfer the breadboard circuit to your own homemade PCB, or otherwise have questions about the Arduino sketch code, leave a comment on the project page and someone will follow-up. And as always, have fun!

YouTube player

8 thoughts on “Control RGB LEDs with this Android-Arduino Combo-Circuit

  1. Maria G. says:

    I`m interested in all those devices and I didn`t know that you can make your own android controller light show! I will definitely ask my husband to spend this weekend making this unique thing together and I`m sure that we will manage thanks to the instruction.

  2. lordpato says:

    Is it possible of implementing bluetooth serial connection instead of USB OTG?. It would be safer and I think it’s not that difficult (I don’t know how to do it from Android side BTW, If you have the code I’ll thank you for ever)

  3. Jhon says:

    My HTC DESIRE HD is not supporting OTG host cabel.
    What can I do????
    HELP!!!!

  4. Saakshi says:

    I want to make long strips just like these for the edges of my room’s ceiling, how can I do that?
    I’m new to electronic projects.
    Thanks :)

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I'm an artist & maker. A lifelong biblioholic, and advocate for all-things geekathon. Home is Long Island City, Queens, which I consider the greatest place on Earth. 5-year former Resident of Flux Factory, co-organizer for World Maker Faire (NYC), and blogger all over the net. Howdy!

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