What is it?

The UltiBlink SL is a prototyping board for artists/makers who want to be able to use a lot of LEDs in their projects without any hassle. It has three DM634 LED drivers and can host up to 48 single color LEDs, up to 16 thru-hole common anode RGB LEDs, or any combination thereof. You can use it with your Arduino, STM32, STM8 or with any other microcontroller board. Libraries for Arduino (Atmega328p), STM32F1 (stm32duino and Atollic TrueStudio tested) and STM8 (not a library but works with ST Visual) are available. The board is chainable.

The angled 5-pin connector intended for the IN interface provides the way to install the extension vertically on the breadboard. The output interface can host additional UltiBlink SL extensions in a chain.

The board connects to the SPI interface (selectable in the software, MOSI and SCK pins) and selectable LAT pin, as well as 5v (preferably external) and common GND.

As the extension board is, effectively, a Core UltiBlink SL without the microcontroller, you can turn it into a fully-featured UltiBlink SL by soldering the missing stuff on the unpopulated side. Or just order the MC soldered as an option, turning the extension into an Arduino with 48 PWM outputs.

Why did you make it?

This board started as a small handy side project (Christmas lights) and was initially aimed at single-color LEDs only. Now, however, this is a versatile universal board capable of supporting both single-color and common anode RGB thru-hole LEDs in many shapes and sizes, as well as anything else you may want to connect to the current-sinking outputs (servos and such).

What makes it special?

I like my LEDs and this is how I use them when not multiplexing. It's easy, fast and fun. And now that I finally made libraries for STM chips this board became even more useful.