Addressable RGB LEDs for adding colourful lighting, effects and animations to your projects. We've got flexible strip, tiny high-density LEDs, diffused neon-like strip and strings of individually controlled lights, plus the boards to drive them.
Choosing your LEDs
- NeoPixel strip (WS2812 and SK6812) is the most common type of addressable RGB strip. It uses a single data line and is well supported by Raspberry Pi, Pico, Arduino and other microcontrollers.
- DotStar strip (APA102 and SK9822) uses separate data and clock lines, allowing faster and more predictable updates - handy for fast animations and persistence-of-vision projects.
- Neon-like RGB strip has a built-in diffuser that turns the individual LEDs into a smooth, continuous-looking line of light.
- Micro LED strip packs lots of tiny LEDs closely together, giving you a high pixel density in a surprisingly small space.
- LED wire and star wire space individually controlled LEDs along thin, flexible wires - great for decorations, wearables and projects where conventional strip would be awkward.
Driving your LEDs
You can drive addressable LEDs from lots of different microcontrollers, but our Plasma 2350 boards are designed specifically for the job. Plasma 2350 has an RP2350 microcontroller and can be programmed in MicroPython or C/C++, while Plasma 2350 W adds Wi-Fi for connected lighting projects.
Adafruit Sparkle Motion is another option, with an ESP32 and support for WLED and xLights - particularly useful if you want to set up elaborate lighting effects without writing everything from scratch. There's also a matching snap-on enclosure.
Powering LED strip
Lots of bright RGB LEDs can draw a surprising amount of current, so larger installations will need a suitable dedicated power supply rather than drawing power through your microcontroller. How much you'll need depends on the type of LEDs, how many you're using and how brightly you're driving them.