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MaxM Blaster without Master
Hello,
I'm quite new to the whole micro controller scene, so pardon me if I ask a silly question.
I ordered an BlinkM Blaster without the Master Board and am wondering if I could wire it to my Arduino. I tried to do it like there was an Master Board, but that didn't work. Does the BlinkM Blaster work without a Master Board?
I'm quite new to the whole micro controller scene, so pardon me if I ask a silly question.
I ordered an BlinkM Blaster without the Master Board and am wondering if I could wire it to my Arduino. I tried to do it like there was an Master Board, but that didn't work. Does the BlinkM Blaster work without a Master Board?
I’m a newbe
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Inappropriate?Hi Philip,
The BlinkM MaxM "Blaster" LED board contains high-power LEDs that cannot be driven properly with just an Arduino. Each LED in the Blaster board draws about 80-100mA of current at full brightness, and a single Arduino pin can supply only about 40mA. Also, the Arduino chip can only supply a total of 200mA, while the Blaster board consumes up to 260mA. So even if you were to hook up a Blaster board directly to an Arduino (as in the diagram below), you likely couldn't get it to work like you wanted and may even damage the chip in your Arduino.
So the diagram below is provided with a big "Warning, don't do this! for instructional purposes only".
You can get a Blaster board to work with an Arduino, but you will need to add power transistors between the Blaster and Arduino, very similar to what is on MaxM. You can search around on the Arduino.cc site for some examples on how to use power transistor switches.
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Inappropriate?Hej, thanks a lot for your fast and good answer.
I think i will try to use a power transistor, cause it seams the master board is currently out of stock here in germany and i can't wait to try this leds out :)
Thanks again.
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?Hi Philip,
If you have some 220 ohm resistors, you can try putting one in series with each LED (instead of just a wire going from pin 9,10,11). This should limit the current enough to let you turn on all the LEDs with an Arduino. The result won't be as bright as it could be, but it'll at least let you try stuff out.
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