My latest project is an Arduino-powered RGB LED undercabinet lighting system for my kitchen. I was pretty unhappy with the lighting of the kitchen in my new apartment, so I decided I needed some undercabinet lighting. And what better way to do that than with a custom-built RGB LED controller!
Version 1 of the LED driver is pretty simple, really. It's just a TIP120 Darlington pair transistor for each R, G, and B channel, respectively. Each of those channels is pulse-width modulated to vary the colors and intensity of the LEDs.
The planned use is to have a motion sensor hidden somewhere in the kitchen, and when a user enters the kitchen, the undercabinet lights fade in to white at full power. After a few minutes of inactivity, I'm going to have it (at least initially, we'll see how it looks) very slowly fade between colors. Then at night, I plan to have it dimly lit in red as a night light for the kitchen.
See the video below for a psychedelic color test of the RGB LED strip in situ (kitchen). In reality, it will never fade that fast or that bright, I just thought the demo was cool.
RGB color test
The Arduino and LED driver board
