Adafruit
DotStar Micro LEDs (APA102–2020) - Smart SMD RGB LED - 10 pack
These incredibly small surface-mount LEDs are an easy way to add a lot of very tiny (but bright!) colorful dots to your project. They're mini versions of&...
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These incredibly small surface-mount LEDs are an easy way to add a lot of very tiny (but bright!) colorful dots to your project. They're mini versions of the ones in our digital DotStart strips and matrices with full chainable 2-wire control. They are just mind-bogglingly small. They are a mere 2mm x 2mm (way smaller than APA102-5050-RGB), which makes them pretty darn tiny so they might be a bit difficult to hand solder. SMT techniques with solder paste and hot air will work best here.
There are three LEDs inside, red green and blue. The RGB LEDs are controlled by a tiny chip that takes a 24-bit color level via the clock and data in and then does all the PWM control for you. So you just 'set' the color data once. Like DotStars (and the similar NeoPixels) you can chain them together, the output of one leading into the input of another for near-infinitely long strips.
Comes in a strip of 10 pieces.
Please note this is a surface mount part! It is possible to solder thin wires to the pads but its designed for use on a SMD PCB. If you are not comfortable with hand soldering SMD parts, check out our other RGB LEDs such as the thru-hole ones or in pixels/strips.
Jargon buster
Plain-language definitions for the technical terms used above.
- PCB
- A printed circuit board (PCB) is a board, usually rigid, with etched copper tracks that connect electronic components together without loose wiring. Components are mounted on the board and signals route between them through the copper layout.
- 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, the three primary colours of light that are mixed in varying amounts to make a wide range of colours. In electronics RGB can refer to an LED or pixel that blends these three colours, or to a colour signal or interface that carries separate red, green and blue channels.
- SMD
- SMD means surface-mount device, a component style designed to be soldered directly onto the surface of a circuit board rather than through holes. SMD parts are compact and mounted flat on the board, which suits smaller and mass-produced designs.
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