So I’ve had a Raspberry Pi since last Summer, and have seen so many accessories and expansion boards developed since, some useful and others not.

However, having wanted to do LED-based projects with my Pi, the LedBorg stood out to me.

I bought an LedBorg (sold by PiBorg), which is a small expansion board (with dimensions of L35.5mm x W16.5mm x H11.5) that plugs directly into the GPIO connectors on the Raspberry Pi. On the board, there is a single RGB LED which can be controlled either by simple lines of code in command line, or there is a GUI for those who don’t want to code.

So what can be done with this LED you may ask? Well there are many uses. From Gmail notifications to showing the CPU temperature of your Pi.

Or you could simply use it as an ambient light just by typing a line of code in a terminal client or SSH, such as:

echo “RGB” > /dev/ledborg

replacing the RGB with the levels of Red, Green and Blue respectively –
0 -> Means channel is off
1 -> Means channel is at 50%
2 -> Means channel is at 100%

For example, this code would make the LED turn red at 100% brightness:

echo “200” > /dev/ledborg

This code would make the LED white at 100% brightness:

echo “222” > /dev/ledborg

More examples of things you can do with the LedBorg can be found here: http://www.piborg.com/ledborg/examples

If you’re interested in buying one, they’re £4.98 each with free UK delivery.