
0 would be off and 255 would be 100% brightness. The PWM of the Arduino is programmable from 0-255. With the Arduino and a technique called PWM, we can pulse each color of the LED separately to create many different colors. Because of the small size of each LED your eyes are tricked into seeing different colors that aren’t actually there! These LEDs can be mixed to show show different intensities of these three colors. However, LEDs and LCDs are only capable of displaying those colors individually. These cones are detectors for red, green, and blue color. The human eye has only three cones (most people).

The LED shares a common ground, apply 3.3V to 5V to each Anode will light the different colors. An anode (+) for each color and shared cathode (-).

Please note this tutorial is not about WS2812b or similar. an RGB LED is basically three LEDs in one that can produce many thousands of colors! Arduino RGB LED configuration! That’s what we’re covering in this tutorial! Most of the time you will be using LEDs that are a single color.
