Wednesday, September 17, 2008

LEDs

So I have been trying to decide what LED colour to choose, my preference was purple however these seem very hard to come by, and I found myself looking at different sizes, luminosity and all sorts of stuff I didn't fully understand.

After some online searching I stumbled across this, a brilliant resource on LED information.

When we boil it down, the 'mcd' rating is basically just how bright or 'luminous' the LED is, the sparkfun button pads can fit 5mm LEDs however most DIYers use 3mm as the official monome keypads can only fit 3mm.

While searching and deciding if I wanted red, green, blue or yellow (the most common colour LEDs sold) I found UV LEDs and instantly thought of going to the bowling alley and gazing at my white clothing with fascination.

In conclusion I think I will order some UV LEDs as well as another colour, most likely blue, from this cheap ebay store someone over at monome.org pointed me toward. I am not sure how well the UV LEDs will illuminate the keypad so im going to order another colour just to compare and see which I like better. I will post pictures of the test when I order the LEDs and buttonpads (when sparkfun finally puts more button PCBs online so I don't have to pay shipping twice that is!).

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