This was one of those stupid "Why the hell did I do that type of projects. Basically, I did it for the niftiness factor. What it is, is a small black plastic box with a single LED on the front. When powered up, it will display random colours, and randomly do smooth fades between other random colours. The LED is one of those RGB ones; this version however uses the "older" technology SiC blue LEDs, and as such it has two blue chips, one green chip, and one red chip in the package. I really want to re-do this project with one of the high-brightness RGB LEDs. Total lead count on this LED is 6 (2 commons, 1 for each LED). It is powered by a PIC16C84 running at 11Mhz. This PIC generates the random numbers and does a 64 level pulse width modulation on the LED to acheive 6 bit brightness control for each colour; hence the 256K colour LED moniker. Other than that, it has a 7805 to power it and not much else.

256K Colour LED

Here's the LED in its natural habitat- on top of my computer desk. Note that the LED is *trying* to emit a reddish-purple colour; but the flash sorta drowned it out.

256K Colour LED Guts

In this view, the PIC, crystal, and 7805 can be seen; the former two being mounted on the perf and the latter is screwed into a hole in the bottom half of the case. The square black wall-wart jack can be seen at the top of the pic.

256K Colour LED Guts

Here's a better view of the power input and regulator, as the 6 wire connected to the LED.