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Andúril light with true rgb? (self.flashlight)

submitted 2 years ago by AI_toothbrush to c/[email protected]

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Is there an andúril light with actual rgb aux lights instead of the resistor ones or the single colour ones? If no, is it even possible with the microchip they use? I know its a pretty limited chip.

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[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

Aux can't be set to anything but high or low, so advanced colour mixing can't be done, if that's what you mean.

It is possible in theory to use some colours on low and some on high at the same time, but the brightness difference would make the low invisible.

Also, it can't be done with PWM because the MCU wouldn't be able to sleep when the light was off/locked, and there aren't enough free PWM counters IIRC anyway.

Maybe if there was a smarter RGB LED, that could have 3 values set via serial and it has a chip on it to do the processing and adjust its outputs, but such a device would be too large to fit where the current aux LEDs go on any light.

[–] AI_toothbrush 1 points 2 years ago (2 children)

There are 1515 neopixels iirc. It would fit. I just dont know if the mcus supported by anduril are fast enough.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

I don't really know much about neopixels, what do they need in terms of control, does it have to be a constant signal or can they just stay in a mode until another mode is set? How many MCU pins do they need?

[–] AI_toothbrush 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They need one pin for all neopixels. You can daisy chain them. You have to start sending the colours in order from last to first neopixel. Only problem is that it needs to be precise but idk how precise.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago

1ms shouldn't be too hard (would just have to have the code to handle it be in the main loop, ideally, rather than an event handler). If it's significantly under 1ms might be a problem.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Unfortunately Neopixels consume too much power, about 1mA quiescent current each, also min Vin is 3.75V according to the datasheet.

The other day I found this small RGB controller, 200uA quiescent current (LEDs off), 300uA LEDs ON, which is much better especially with only one controller for all the aux LEDs.