This year I decided to get an early start experimenting with RGB leds

[G+_Dan Hockey]

This year I decided to get an early start experimenting with RGB leds. Last year I got 2 Phillips Illuminate sets. One set I put on the tree the other I opened up to see whats inside.

The WiFi module look as like it has been discontinued. One of three serial ports on the WiFi module is used for the mcu. The square chip in the upper left corner on the bottom side of the board is some sort of 8051 mcu.

 

The control box connector has 3 pins. With the notch pointing up the upper left pin is a 5 volt PWM signal of some sort, the upper right pin is +20 vdc, and the bottom pin is ground.

 

As you can see in the pics I cut open one of the leds. It looks like an rgb led with a white led, the black blob on the bottom must be the driver chip.

Each led string is 25 leds, there is a 5 volt regulator in the string connector. There 4 wires in the string with the fourth wire being the 20vdc to the connector at the end of each string.The control box can handle 5 strings total.

 

I have a set of the following I wired up to the control box..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/50pcs-500pcs-WS2811-RGB-Full-Color-Pixels-digital-Addressable-LED-String-12mm-5V-/272280746861?var=&hash=item3f65327b6d:m:mb4GkKbi_A3UgUUyY-6W2Xw

 

The first 3 leds lit up with random colors and stayed that way. What ever Phillips used for leds is not compatible with what I have.

 

I guess my next step would be to use one of my arduino's to try to find a led library that will work with the phillips leds.

 

I've also been trying to figure out how to re-create this using an arduino and a wifi module, preferably one that's still in production.

 

btw the default out of the box wifi password is "12345678" remember that when you see one of these on display in you local store.