Today I want to make a LED Scroll Bar as the above picture showed. Ten LED strips can flash in different effects by using a control board.

Required Components 

LED strip, Arduino Nano, Dupont line and a control board.

So, how to make a LED Scroll Bar?  

Step 1) 

Cut the LED strip into 10 pieces and each piece has arbitrary number of LEDs. Then, weld the traverse at an interface of the LED strip. Here I prefer to use Dupont line to connect.

Step 2) Design

Make a control board. Using the control board to control the flash pattern of LED strips. Aided by Arduino Nano and equipped with a keypad, we can make the LED strip flash in different patterns.

Step 2.1) Start with Designing Schematic 

To design my circuit, I choose a free tool EasyEDA which has a large number of component libraries in its editor, so you can easily and quickly find your desired parts.

You can access the following schematic diagram through this link 

Notes: The voltage of the LED strip is 12 V and Arduino Nano is 5V. Please remember to add a power regulator such as AMS1117-5.0.

Step 2.2) Create the PCB Layout.

You can see the PCB layout in the following diagram:

Step 2.3) Make a sample 

After complete the design of PCB, you can click the icon of Fabrication output above. Then you will access the page PCB order todownload Gerber files of your PCB and send them to any manufacturer,

Step 2.4) Take delivery of the PCB and recieve PCB

Step 2.5) Welding

It is very easy to make a control board. Just as the following picture described, as soon as the components are welded, it is completed.

Step 3) Connection 

Connect the LED strip to the control board and at the same time please pay attention to the positive and negative of the terminals.

As the picture showed below.

Step 4) Download a program 

Connect it to a 12 V power supply, download a program on the Arduino Nano and run it. Press the button to switch flash mode. If you need, you can clone my LED Scroll Bar Schematic and PCB here.

Now I completed my project of scroll bar.

Making your own LED Scroll Bar creates a lot of fun, and the results can be very rewarding. Hopefully this article will help you make a LED Scroll Bar, You can also write a program to make the LED strip flash in the way you like.

The original link:  http://letsmakerobots.com/node/49554