Little Bird
Blinkt!
Eight super-bright RGB LED indicators that are ideal for adding visual notifications to your Raspberry Pi without breaking the bank! Inspired by A...
Eight super-bright RGB LED indicators that are ideal for adding visual notifications to your Raspberry Pi without breaking the bank!
Inspired by Alex Ellis' work with his Raspberry Pi Zero Docker Cluster, we developed these boards for him to use as status indicators. Blinkt! offers eight APA102 pixels in the smallest (and cheapest) form factor to plug straight onto your Raspberry Pi.
Each pixel on Blinkt! is individually controllable and dimmable allowing you to create gradients, pulsing effects, or just flash them on and off like crazy. The data and clock lines are connected to GPIO #23 and #24 respectively but for simplicity you can just use our Python library to drive them.
Features
- Eight APA102 RGB LEDs
- Individually controllable pixels
- Sits directly on top of your Pi in a tiny footprint
- Fits inside most Pi cases
- Doesn't interfere with PWM audio
- Blinkt! pinout
- Compatible with Raspberry Pi 3B+, 3, 2, B+, A+, Zero, and Zero W
- Python library
- Comes fully assembled
Software
Our Blinkt! Python library will have you blasting out rainbows in two shakes of a unicorn's tail! There's a stack of examples too, from binary clocks to cheerlights and flickering candles to Larson scanners!
Our software does not support Raspbian Wheezy.
Notes
- Be careful to plug in your Blinkt! the correct way round, it has curves on the top that match the corners of your Raspberry Pi
- If you want to access the rest of the GPIO at the same time as using Blinkt! then our Mini Black HAT Hack3r is the ideal accompaniment, allowing you to combine Blinkt! with another HAT or pHAT, or just prototype using the GPIO pins for your own project
- The dimensions of Blinkt! are 65mm long x 8mm wide x 8.5mm thick (thickness includes header and pixels)
- Additional accessories shown in photos not included
We featured Blinkt! on a special episode of Bilge Tank where we tried to come up with as many different code examples as possible in one morning. Check it out below.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- GPIO
- General-purpose input/output pins are microcontroller pins you can set in software to read signals, switch devices on and off, or connect to peripherals. The number of GPIO pins matters because it limits how many buttons, LEDs, sensors, and other parts you can wire directly to the board.
- LED
- A light-emitting diode is a small electronic component that lights up when current flows through it in the correct direction. In this kit, LEDs create the flashing effect, so polarity and correct soldering matter for the project to work.
- pHAT
- A smaller add-on board format for Raspberry Pi, similar in idea to a HAT but usually not full-sized. It matters because pHAT compatibility can affect how neatly a board stacks or fits into a Raspberry Pi project.
- PWM
- Pulse Width Modulation is a way for a digital pin to simulate variable output power by switching on and off very quickly. It matters for controlling things like LED brightness, motor speed, or servo-style signals from a microcontroller pin.
- RGB
- Short for red, green and blue, usually referring to an LED that can mix those three colours. It matters because controlling an RGB LED teaches how separate outputs combine to create different colours.
Find this product in
Project Guides
Step-by-step builds that use this part
Related Tutorials
Free guides on learn.littlebird.com.au
