The Sparkle Shield is an add-on shield for Arduino that has 70 individually programmable full color LEDs arranged in a 7x10 matrix. It comes as an unassembled kit that you can solder yourself with a few basic tools. The Sparkle Shield comes with a bunch of cool animations, but it's also easy to program your own using the free Arduino development kit (compatible with PC/Mac/Linux) and the Sparkle Shield Arduino library.

It uses Sparkle Pixel intelligent through-hole LEDs that are software compatible with the NeoPixel and WS2811/WS2812 LEDs. They have a built in IC which makes controlling them with an arduino a breeze.

It's incredibly bright - setting it to just 20% brightness is enough to make you squint. It can be powered straight from your USB port if you keep the LEDs below their maximum brightness, but it also comes with a screw terminal for an external power supply if you want to crank it all the way up to max - this one goes to 11!

The kit comes with two types of headers to use to plug it into your arduino. You can use the stackable headers to allow you to plug in other sensors or outputs, or you can go for a more streamlined look with the nonstackable headers.

By default it uses pin 6 on the arduino, but you can cut a trace and use nearly any other pin if you need to customize it.

If you want even more sparkle, you can chain multiple shields together. Just connect the DI pin on the second shield to the DO of the first shield, and connect ground and power to both boards. You can chain as many as you like, though after 5 boards or so you may run into RAM limitations, depending on your arduino.

Assembly time takes around 2-3 hours, depending on your soldering experience.

Comes with optional stackable headers to allow you plug in aother things to your arduino, and a connector for using an external power supply.

Compatibility:

• Arduino Uno (all revisions)
• Arduino Leonardo
• Arduino Mega 2560, 1280 and ADK (all revisions)
• Arduino Duemilanove and Diecimila w/ATmega328 chip

Note: Arduino and soldering tools not included.

The Sparkle Shield is open hardware. The design and code is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.