Adafruit
DotStar Micro LEDs (APA102–2020)- Smart SMD RGB LED - 100 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&...
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 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 bitty, so they might be a little cumbersome 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 100 pieces. Also available in a 10 pack!
Please note this is a surface-mount part! It is possible to solder thin wires to the pads, but it's 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 is a rigid board with copper tracks that connect electronic parts without loose wires. For this kit, the PCBs also form the airplane shape, so they are both the circuit base and part of the finished model.
- 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.
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