Blinkt!
Eight super-bright RGB LED indicators for your Raspberry Pi!
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Eight super-bright RGB LED indicators for your Raspberry Pi!
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Blinkt! is, in their own words, "Eight super-bright RGB LED indicators that are ideal for adding visual notifications to your Raspberry Pi without breaking the bank!" It's incredibly cheap and very easy to program with their Python library and examples. Use it as a status indicator, a binary clock or anything else your brain can think of!
From opening the package to writing my own binary clock/calendar with Blinkt! took literally minutes, and I'm not even that experienced with Python.
It's easy to install without any soldering or extra parts needed, it fitted inside my case easily (luckily for me it was see through) and the software installation was done through a single command in bash.
The API consists of a few python functions like clear(), show(), set_pixel() - very easy to understand and use how you want.
I had to put the brightness down to 0.05 (out of 1), they are incredibly bright. Being RGB, you can create wonderful rainbow animations or just utilise the fact to add extra possibilities to your projects. For instance, I made a binary clock and calendar by using a different colour for different segments of the date/time and flashing them consecutively on a timer.
My plan is to implement these at work as status indicators in our large warehouse, to cut down the amount of time needed for staff to check computers and screens from a long distance. Again, this is just another example of the possibilities of this simple addon, particularly because of the tiny price of both the Pi and Blinkt! itself!
Pros:Incredibly cheap, easy to program, RGB & dimmable, super bright and easy to install (no soldering). Endless possibilities!
Cons:I suppose that there are only 8 lights? But in a way that's also the beauty of it.