Shay wrote:
> I'm trying to figure out what the best way is to control an RGB LED.  
> Some questions I have:
> 
> 1) Do I need to light all 3 colors at once, or can I just light 1 at a 
> time and use POV to get the desired color?

Either way works but a pwm method is probably a better approach.  In 8 
bit pwm (pulse width modulation), you can get 256 levels for each led 
which gives you 16+ million colors.

> 2) Should I use a microcontroller or an LED Driver?

Use a pic, no question about it.

> 3) Anyone have any POV timings to get specfic colors?  not sure how to 
> state this.. probably dependant on the RGB LED so I'll probably have to 
> figure this out on my own?  maybe a better question is, any suggestions 
> on how to figure out timings needed to generate specific colors?

Yes, you will be on your own here since leds vary from one to another 
and from one manufacturer to another.  Plus my idea of lemony-mauve is 
maybe different from yours.  Plus, this is the fun part after you get a 
circuit working.

*ANY* pic will work but I would suggest one with at least 8 or more 
pins.  Then you can dedicate 3 to the outputs and 3 more to read 
potentiometers.  This way, you can play with the pots and get all the 
colors you want.  Another way would be to hook up a serial port and 
write a simple program to send color data (pwm values, actually) and 
then you could easily tell the pic to "give me 127,234,19" for r,g,b 
values, for example.

For how to do pwm, see Scott Dattalo's page:
http://www.dattalo.com/technical/software/software.php
Down near the bottom are some pwm references. Or try the piclist dungeon 
as well.

Good luck!

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