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LED - RGB Diffused Common Cathode

sku: COM-09264 RoHS Compliant In Eagle Library

Description: Ever hear of a thing called RGB? Red, Green, Blue? How about an RGB LED? These 5mm units have four pins - Cathode is the longest pin. One for each color and a common cathode. Use this one LED for three status indicators or pulse width modulate all three and get mixed colors!

These LEDs are diffused; so they'll appear dimmer, but have a wider viewing angle.

Features:

Forward Voltage (RGB): (2.0, 3.2, 3.2)V
Max Forward Current (RGB): (20, 20, 20)mA
Max Luminosity (RGB): (2800, 6500, 1200)mcd

Documents:

Pricing

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Comments 18 comments

LittleBlinkyThing | about 7 months ago 2

Check out what this guy did with these things!!!
http://www.instructables.com/id/Aurora-9-bar-The-Essence-of-Aurora/
It’s amazing!
Maragnus | about 3 years ago 1

Fantastic! I hope the diffusion helps to counter the offset of the colored diodes. With the other RGB LED, I had to use a small piece of paper to help blend the colors.
blink4jona | about 2 years ago 1

I can imagine these appear dimmer than the clear lenses LEDs but their Luminous Intensity is much higher than the clear.
Has anyone used these with the 4x4 button pad break out’s? are they just too dim?
I probabyly I don’t need the diffusing characteristics because the silicone buttons would take care of the diffusion but the clear lenses LEDs are out of stock. And, $1.95 is a good price for RGB LEDs, they’re more than 2X expensive at digikey.
- CoryW | about a year ago 1
  
  I actually prefer using the diffused LEDs with the button pads. I tried both, and I’ve found that you can’t tell a difference in brightness, but you can see the shape of the clear LEDs through the buttons.
  Unfortunately I ordered four and let the smoke out of one of them. Although I already have four clear, I might spend the extra money to get 4 diffused in my buttons.
CalcProgrammer1 | about 2 years ago 1

I really like this LED. I wish I would’ve ordered more! The only problem with it is that the red LED has a lower rated voltage and thus a lower resistance than the green and blue. If you want to only use one resistor (connecting the negative lead to ground) you must add software limits on the red because it will “drown out” the blue and green. Electricity flows to the path of least resistance, the red LED has the least resistance and will cause unexpected issues with a common resistor. I haven’t tried it yet but I think 3 individual source resistors would fix this. As for the colors, they are awesome, using PWM signals you can make any color you want. I wrote a program that generates random colors every second, it’s kind of a cool thing to leave running and add some color to a dull white dorm room.
- ElWombato | about 2 years ago 1
  
  Actually, if my understanding of diodes is right, the red LED will cause a lower voltage drop, it has nothing to do with resistance. If this is the case, running one resistor to ground will cause a bit of a mess here. This means all 3 LEDs are directly in parallel, and since voltage drop must be equal in parallel, but the rated voltage drops for the LEDs are different, this is going to do some weird stuff. Adding resistors in series with each LED will fix this because the voltage drop over the resistor connected to the red LED will just be a little higher.
  - Mark D. | about 11 months ago 1
    
    Remember to adjust the resistors so that each LED gets equal current, too. If you put the same value on all three, the red will still dominate.
prairie mystic | about 2 years ago 1

5mm T1-¾ RGB LED’s are 4-pin with 0.05" spacing, for square 0.028" pins (x1.414) use a 0.040" hole size
IdRatherBePainting | about 2 years ago 1

The “Wiring Example” link http://wiring.org.co/learning/basics/rgbled.html on this page contains a known attack/intrusion attempt as detected by Norton 05 Aug 10 using “HTTP Phoenix Toolkit Java Class Activity”
stuff dude guy | about 2 years ago 1

you guys should order some of those rgb leds that have the 4 legs bent apart so that there bread board and potoboard friendly.
- RobertC. | about 2 years ago 1
  
  They are currently just breadboard acquaintances, it is up to you to make them be friendly – it’s half the fun.
UNTEngineer | about a year ago 1

Its so weird, Ive got a Teensy running Arduino code, with this LED, and yet I only can run Red and Blue on the Analog pins, while Green only will run on the Digital pins. When I try to put all of them on analog or all on digital, they either dont work, or the output is very dim. Anyone have any suggestions on this?

By the way Ive gotten all 3 to show pretty bright, so I dont know if thats a factor or not. Using 1k Ohm resistors is too much to get any output, but thats what Ive been using with regular LEDs.
- UNTEngineer | about a year ago 1
  
  Oops, I just realized my problem is that I wasnt using PWM pins like I was supposed to. It all works now. ;)
straylight | about a year ago 1

they sell these at radioshack for $3 each. get yourself the 25pc, or 100pc packs and they will be < $1 each.
can’t beat the price for this good of rgb LED (others aren’t as good)
gregf | about a year ago 1

anyone know how these compare in brightness to the clear RGB leds? the max luminosity on these is much higher (2800, 6500, 1200 vs 800, 4000, 900) which seems counterintuitive.
jolshefsky | about a year ago 1

Any common anode varieties? I find common-cathode is a hassle to work unless you’re hooking straight to 5V logic pins — it’s way easier to work with the common cathode NPN / common drain N-FET outputs on shift registers like http://www.sparkfun.com/products/734 , “Shift Register 8-Bit High-Power – TPIC6B595”.
Ty J. | about 9 months ago 1

Common anode would be great because they play nice with the TLC5940.
Funda | about 2 months ago 1

The pin spacing is 0.80 mm from eachother and the pins are 0.50 mm x 0.50 mm thick.