Arduino Tutorial 21: Understanding and Mixing Primary Colors with an RGB LED

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In this lesson we introduce the concept of primary color systems, and look at RGB and CMY systems. We use an RGB LED to mix colors to create the CMY colors. This lesson builds on the work done in lesson 20.

You can get the kit I am using for this series at the following link:

You can follow these lessons on our WEB site HERE:

#Arduino

[sammydogruby]

Another treasure trove Paul. many thanks from a 81 year old newbie in the UK. Already looking forward to the next lesson.

[leonhardeuler]

Nice I used three potentiometers to adjust each colour with analogRead and analogwrite

[mortezapayandeh]

I used a potentiameter and 2 pullup resistors with RGB LED and switch between main colors by tapping a key, adjusting the strength of each color by turning the nub, and clicking another button to set the color. It's amazing!!!

[phil-mlnd]

I would also to thankyou for all you do, i'm a little late to the Arduino party being medically retired after some 40 ish years being a mechanic i was going stir crazy with nothing to do being physically challenged ;, now am learning again and you make it so interesting (thankyou for spelling colour the English way as that is were i'm from )👍

[GuruKid]

Hey Paul, just want to say I've been trying to learn Arduino while quarantined due to COVID-19 and have been learning so much from these tutorials. Thanks for making the learning process so fun, can't wait to learn more from this series!

[Aes-nttn]

Being the exploring type, I came up with an interesting variation.
Using for loops and and an if statement, I wrote a sketch that continuously cycles the RGB LED through al the colors from red to yellow to green to cyan to blue to magenta to red, and all colors in between. Of course I used a delay to control the speed.
Pretty cool!

[karelenmarritkruyswijk]

Just came back from holiday without Internet. Happy to catch up soon and try this colours with 3 potmeters I think. Thank you for this lesson.

[simontopley]

Bought back memories of setting up old CRT tellies, our trick was, to make it a perfect black and white, when that was correct, we could add in chrominance, that being the colour signal.

[emryscass]

Because of your lessons I was able to connect 3 potentiometers with 1 RGB LED and code everything on my own. Each potentiometer had its own task (red, green, blue) and I was able to convert the 0 - 1023 to 0 - 255 and send the signals to the RGB LED to create any color I wanted. Thank you for having this channel available to us!

[Stinky_bolla]

I want to thank you for these videos! I am at 21 now and did a sideproject where I used three pot meters to adjust the levels of the led. All with stuff I learned from you!! Thanks again!!

[michaeljenkins]

The Elegoo kit is the best thing I ever purchased! Even though this stuff has so many potential real-world applications for work, this is very fun to play around with!

[ob]

Hello Mr. McWhorter. Thankyou for your wonderful lessons. We have learned a lot from this one too. Our LED light was brilliant! We made so many diffirent colors with it, and we can't wait to learn how to make black. Thank you very much! 😄

[shagwagg]

This was my solution to the exercise at the end of lesson 20. I was using a common Anode RGB LED, so using analog, Write a value of 0 switched the colour on, and 255 switched it off, with corresponding values inbetween to mix the colours. Also inserted 3 potentiometers into the circuit which enabled me to mix the colour by turning the pot. Great lectures as always. Really helping me to learn and use my kit.

[malicegarden]

So I'm 21 lessons in and I have really gotten the hang of it up to this point. Thanks for this great series.

[michaelromeo]

Great one, this is right up my ally...trying to build a sprectrum alalyzer with led strips and this is the basis for the whole thing. Thanks Paul

[grahamovermyer]

He really said, "Here's my address, hook a brother up with a Keurig."

[davidransier]

Having a lot of fun with this class. Even though I have the Elegoo Super Starter Kit, I also have a DrDuino Explorer board that I assembled and am trying to learn how to use. If you are not familiar, the Explorer has a lot of components and devices installed as a very flexible bread board. I can talk directly to many of the devices on board, or switch them out and use the GPIO pins to talk to a conventional Breadboard. Today I used it to play with the RGB LED. Instead of entering numbers via the Serial comms, I used the three on-board Pots. Read them via analog pins, converted to PWM values, and sent the numbers to the LED. Therefore I can adjust the three pots to create any color I want. So much fun! Thanks for this great class!

[manuelaviles]

Great, i added a config section so that you can use 3 potenciometers to configure new colors, it shows the R G B value in the serial monitor so its easier to make more colors. And all thanks to all these videos. you are awsome.

[lisecd]

Love your lessons, appreciate the time you have put in to them.

[Hino_]

I think, for flexibility...
best to utilize pins that can be used for both digitalWrite(); and analogWrite();
Pins like ~11 (redPin), ~10 (greenPin), ~9 (bluePin)

Thank you Sir Paul for this great lesson!