Raspberry Pi PiGlow adds LED feedback [video]
Pimoroni has just created a colourful addition for the Raspberry Pi called the Pi PiGlow Rainbow LED.
The Raspberry Pi PiGlow Rainbow LED sounds like it might illuminate your toilet time, but it has actually been designed to add a little colour to the Pibow transparent Raspberry Pi case which the company launched last year.
The PiGlow is a small clip-on card that packs 18 colour LEDs – three each of red, orange, yellow, green, blue and white – arranged in a fixed triskelion pattern with the aim of being used as a unique but very cool indicator display.
Installed on the Pi’s GPIO pins, the PiBow is controlled through the tiny computer’s I2C bus. It draws its power from the Pi too.
Pimoroni provides clear instructions online to help you activate the Pi’s I2C drivers, and includes the datasheet for the SN3218 LED controller chip, which lists the part’s 24 settings registers and the values that need to be written to them to activate any or all of the LEDs and to set the brightness of each one.
Pimoroni lists some of the PiGlow’s uses as:
- Mood lighting / ambience
- Showing current system load
- Notify you of events like mentions in tweets or incoming e-mail
- Feedback the status of scripts/daemons running on your Pi
- Works great when VESA mounted to provide a cast against a wall
- …and pretty much anything else you can think of!
The Raspberry Pi PiGlow Rainbow LED accessory is now available for the bargain price of £9
