Create your own LED light show with an Arduino and an iPhone

This tutorial will show you how to control an analog RGB LED light strip via an Arduino and an iOS device. It will use the LightShow app which lets you set a single color or create a light show with a sequence of colors.

Materials:

• Analog SMD RGB LED Strip
• 3 x N-channel power MOSFET
• 12V power supply
• DC Barrel Jack Adapter
• nRF8001 BLE board
• Arduino Uno
• iOS device
• LightShow App

Step 1: Attach the light strip

Use a power transistor such as a N-Channel MOSFET between the Arduino and the light strip.

The transistor should be rated to greater than or equal to the maximum current that your lights will draw. To determine the maximum current draw multiply 20 milliAmperes times the number of LED’s on the strip. For example, a strip with 300 LEDs would draw up to 6 amperes.

With the black gate facing you, connect the left pin to the Arduino, the middle pin to the light strip and the right pin to ground. Connect the Red, Green, and Blue channels to Arduino pins 3, 5, and 6 respectively.

Connect the light strips 12V anode directly to a 12V power supply and connect the power supplies negative terminal to the common ground.

Further information on working with light strips is available here.

Step 2: Connect the Bluetooth Low Energy board

Connect the nRF8001 Bluetooth LE breakout board to your breadboard. Connect the BLE pins to the Arduino as follows:

• SCK – 13
• MISO – 12
• MOSI – 11
• REQ – 10
• RST – 9
• RDY – 2

Further information on the using the nRF8001 BLE board is available here.

Step 3: Upload the sketch to the Arduino