Kappa3750Rasp: IS3750 Demoboard for Raspberry Pi

The Kappa3750Rasp is an evaluation board for the IS3750 Addressable LED controller chip. It enables engineers to easily evaluate the IS3750 without the need for soldering or developing their own prototype—offering a ready‑to‑use solution. The board features 28x WS2812BAddressable LEDs to test your code. The IS3750 is LED-agnostic, meaning it can control GRB, RGB, GRBW, or any other color combination.

The board also features two selection jumpers: one to set the I2C speed (100 kHz, 400 kHz, or 1 MHz), and another to select the I2C pull-up voltage (3.3 V or floating).

Designed as a shield with the Raspberry Pi form factor, the Kappa3750Rasp benefits from its widespread popularity, ensuring compatibility with various single board computers (SBC).

The IS3750 is an ideal solution for ensuring Addressable LED protocol timing constraints, reducing CPU load, RAM usage and eliminating the need for a dedicated pin. It can control up to 1200 LEDs.

How It Works

The core of the shield is the IS3750 Addressable LED Controller Chip. Its I2C pins are routed directly to the Raspberry’s I2C interface. So, by simply plugging the shield into your evaluation board, it connects seamlessly to its I2C serial interface.

The board includes I2C pull-up resistors, so you don’t need to add them externally. The board features also a jumper to select the appropriate I2C speed.

The LED output pin of the IS3750 is connected to a voltage level shifter to ensure a proper 5V signal level, since the chip itself operates at 3.3V.

Controlling the LEDs is super easy. The IS3750 uses an internal memory map:

• Registers 0x001, 0x002, and 0x003 control the RGB values of the first LED.
• Registers 0x004, 0x005, and 0x006 control the second LED, and so on.

Think of it like writing to EEPROM—except instead of storing data, you’re writing colors!