Addressable LEDs Shine with Extreme Brightness

These RGB LEDs are bigger and much brighter than normal WS28xx devices

Jeremy Cook
2 years agoLights

Addressable LEDs have brightened up many a project over the past few years. Such LEDs are able to combine red, green, blue, and sometimes white, LEDs into all colors of the rainbow, then pass data along to the next unit in the chain to repeat the process. They really are marvelous maker tools. Such lights are suitably bright for many applications, especially when 100 or so are on display.

If you need something even more luminous, then the 3W "NeoPixel XL" by Electro Point presents a "bright idea." Note that these are not an official NeoPixel product from Adafruit, but use the term in a general sense.

Each of these LEDs consume up to a full amp of current, versus the 60mA (.06 A) often cited for normal addressable LED use. This means one LED unit consumes roughly 17x the current of a standard WS28xx running at 5V, and is naturally much brighter than its counterpart. Each XL includes driver circuitry to power the LEDs and pass along data, and it plays nicely with the FastLED library. These LEDs, as explained in the video below, are so bright that Electro Point has a hard time actually looking at them.

Physically, the XL devices are constructed on a 2cm x 2cm square, and can be soldered onto another PCB, or play nicely with a breadboard. One can use them with with an Arduino or ESP-based device, and perhaps a single LED could form the heart of a custom RGB flashlight mod. Whatever you decide, these giganto-LEDs looks like a lot of fun!

Jeremy Cook
Engineer, maker of random contraptions, love learning about tech. Write for various publications, including Hackster!
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