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Home | Product Categories | Other | COM-11020

RGB LED Chain - 20 LED Addressable

sku: COM-11020 RoHS Compliant

Description: Let there be light(s)! This festive string of addressable RGB LEDs can add color to indoor or outdoor displays. Much like our addressable LED strips, this chain of lights is composed of 20 individually sealed 10mm RGB LEDs and drivers. The driver for this chain is our old friend, the WS-2801 constant current LED driver. The WS2801 is a common, well-supported driver and example code is available for various microcontrollers. The 2-wire control scheme allows you to control the entire chain over only two GPIOs and because data cascades across the drivers, you can chain as many of these together as you can power!

The chain is about 7 feet long with 3" of ribbon cable between each light. It's terminated on either side with a locking 3-pin connector, one male and one female, for ground, data and clock connections. The ground and power are also broken out to bare wire leads on either end. The LEDs mount snugly into a 7/16" hole.

Note: There are no labels on the wires. You can look at the example code or hook it up as follows: clock - blue, data - green, red - VCC, white - GND. There is a black arrow on the underside of the LEDs which indicates the direction of the strand.

Dimensions: 7' long, about 4" between centers

Features:

  • IP66
  • Rated Voltage 5VDC
  • WS2801 IC
  • 20 LEDs per chain

Documents:

Pricing

In stock

34.95
31.46
27.96

138 in stock

price
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100+ units



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images are CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

ASCII version


Comments 21 comments

  • DigitalWorld | about 5 months ago 1

    I see Ambilight clones in the future…

  • SlyVixsky | about 5 months ago 1

    IP66 – Dust Tight, waterproof versus “Test duration: at least 3 minutes Water volume: 100 litres per minute Pressure: 100 kN/m² at distance of 3m”

    Not bad. might be worth submerged testing for table top fountains or such :)

  • Grody | about 5 months ago 1

    Holy crap! Well, it’s too late for Christmas this year, but it looks like next year will be even more merry than this one.

  • BobLoblaw | about 5 months ago 1

    Do you sell just the connectors?

  • sycophantic | about 5 months ago 1

    The readme in the example code has a link to adafruit

  • ThinkerT | about 5 months ago 1

    Looks like mini Cheerlights to me! Just add Twitter

  • Steve123 | about 5 months ago 1

    I just picked mine up, only to find out that there isn’t even a pinout for this product… There are 4 wires between LEDs (Red, Green Blue White) but 3 pin connectors on each end. To make things more confusing, the white wire “T"s to the connector and just a bare wire on each end. Any thoughts?

  • Steve123 | about 5 months ago 1

    Well, looking under a magnifying glass I can just make out on the top of the PCB “SJ-1515ICRGB” and googling turns up: http://www.made-in-china.com/showroom/gernerous11/product-detailObpJKswAASRm/China-RGB-LED-Pixel-Light-WS2801-.html Hopefully the pinout is the same…

  • Arrohbee | about 5 months ago 1

    Has anyone measured the total current drawn by one strand of these lights, all on? Trying to get an idea of the power requirements. Thanks.

    • Steve123 | about 5 months ago 1

      I don’t remember exactly, but it couldn’t have been much more than ¼ Amp (running the demo software), or my power supply current limit would have kicked in. So that gives you an order of magnitude answer… They were also brighter than I expected. A quick google shows this web page: http://www.aliexpress.com/product-fm/516056341-WS-2801-IC-rgb-LED-pixel-light-12mm-wholesalers.html Which implies 60mA per LED; that would be 1.2A for all of them all on.

  • Member #280089 | about 5 months ago 1

    Does anyone know how to determine which wires connecting the LEDs are for 5v, ground, clock, and data?

    • arnuschky | about 4 months ago 1

      Got mine today. Cable colors match description, but I checked anyways on the little PCBs, all seemed fine. I wired everything up as indicated, used pin 4 and 5 as clock and data using adafruits driver.

      When I connect 5V the first LED works (blueish color). When I connect the arduino, nothing changes, all LEDs stay off. Whenever I remove one of the cables from the arduino pins, the LED goes through a series of colors and then stops on an apparently random one. Same happens when I touch the cable (without disconnecting it).

      Does anyone have a clue what’s going on?

      BTW, do I have to terminate them? What do they mean by “direction”? The product description is rather vague. In the description of the other WS2801 LED strips they say “Please see example code for termination explanation.” but there’s nothing in there!?

  • ianbsmith | about 4 months ago 1

    If I wanted to drive a bunch of these with an Arduino, I’d need to use another power source because of the current. But if I used another power supply with constant voltage, I would be able to control the brightness and color of the LEDs separately through the clock and data wires, right?

  • diemaster | about 3 months ago 1

    can you cut off the waterproof coating? i want to make the the wires between them longer with out cutting and heat shinking on each end.

  • Stinny | about 2 months ago * 1

    Check out this project my freinds and I did with 100 of these LEDs. We used them to make a LED screen that reacts to music.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CR312-e-nI

  • Member #24259 | about 2 months ago 1

    Received mine last week, just got time to sit down with it.. My color don’t match anything mentioned on this page. Mine wires are Blue/Red/Yellow/Green.. Like others I have a three pin connector.. Can’t fined any other notes on this item, feel a little ripped off with this product. Think I’ll stick with the blinkm..

  • IllegalPete | about a month ago 1

    Just got a strand of these in to try them out. They’re cheaper than bliptronics, so my expectations were a bit low. I was pleasantly surprised. They’re bright, show great color and appear to be well constructed. They fit in a ½" hole and have a little barb around the edge of the light to help hold them in the hole. I didn’t think to order a 3-pin connector, but I just cut the connector off the trailing end to use instead. Anyone buying these should also buy a female barrel connector for the power. The Arduino-fed power is plenty for 1 strip of lights. You’ll want dedicated power for multiples. I was able to get the sample arduino library programmed and working in about 20 minutes. The only slow down was the sample library has the i2c pins on 2/3, where I’d been used to using 0/1. I moved the pins over and voila. My next step is to integrate a spectrum analyzer shield.

  • lagrasta | last month 1

    Can anyone tell me if I can run these “directly” from a computer…perhaps using something like this FTDI cable: http://www.sparkfun.com/products/9718 ? Or will I have to use some sort of arduino middle man?

    Thanks smart people!

    Sincerely, ee noob

    • IllegalPete | about 3 weeks ago 1

      Hi EE Noob, These lights use an ‘i2c’ (read “i-squared c”) or “2-wire” (clock and data) interface, which is actually 4 wires (clock,data,power,ground). You need something that will translate serial into i2c commands. An arduino seems like the standard Sparkfun tinkerers approach, but a quick google of ‘usb i2c’ shows a cool little board that lets you control i2c directly from a program on the computer.

      Hey, Sparkfun guys, you should carry these! http://www.robot-electronics.co.uk/acatalog/USB_I2C.html