Brilldea

Prop Blade PCB

The Prop Blade is a PCB designed for use with the Parallax Propeller. The Prop Blade is designed to be used for your LED lighting, animatronics or other theatrical project. The Prop Blade incorporates on-board voltage regulators, RS-485 communication chip (for DMX-512A), DIP Switches, tactile switches and debug LED. In addition there are headers for easily attaching I/O or your own custom designed add on boards.

The Propeller is a microcontroller with 8 processors in one package! The MCU can be run at speeds of up to 80 MHz. The Propeller is the easiest to use multi-processor MCU available today and it is powerful!

The Prop Blade ships as a bare PCB. The datasheet includes schematics, assembly details and a bill of materials for the parts needed to assemble the Prop Blade. The Prop Blade PCB requires you to supply the components and to solder them to the PCB. The Prop Blade was designed in conjunction with the LED Painter to make a great combination RGB LED Lighting system. One Prop Blade can control up to two chains of LED Painters.

The Prop Blade was recently used in a project to create "LED windows." You can check out a brief video of the installation here. The Prop Blade is compatible with the DMX-512A Receiving Driver found on our Resources page.

If you don't want to source the components yourself then consider a kit which includes a PCB and the components for assembling the Prop Blade. All components are included but you will need to add a Prop Plug for programming your Prop Blade. The kit includes both through-hole, 1206, QFP and SSOP components.

Check out our "Controllable RGB LED system for your home or office" over at Instructables which uses the Prop Blade.