Ambient Orb aka Rainbow Ball

For some reason this "ambient orb" Arduino project blew me away. The basic setup is very easy: red, green and blue LEDs mixed in different amounts. (Putting them inside a diffusing cover helps the mixing.) There are only two catches:

1. LEDs aren't dimmable the way incandescents are, so how do you control mix?
2. Finding LEDs of all three colors in the same output is nearly impossible.

The solution to the first catch is Pulse Width Modulation. Basically, you send tiny bursts of current so it flickers on and off faster than you can see it. The more time it spends on (the "duty cycle") the brighter it seems. Doing this from the Arduino is simply a matter of adjusting a number to say what you want the duty cycle to be in the range 0-255.

For the second catch, I pored over catalogs and websites trying to find matching LEDs. I did find them more than once, but it was always coming out too expensive. I mean, I was blown away by the idea, but not to the tune of $10! (Maybe I should have called this blog "The Cheap Bastard".)

I actually do already have all three colors, but the single blue LED I have is a trillion times brighter than any of the others. Really, it's blinding. I could have just bought a new blue to match the low-level reds and greens I have, but what power are they? Is there any way to figure that out, maybe from power consumption?

Finally I realized I could just use a bunch of reds and greens and also cut the blue's power in half (i.e. never get the PWM duty cycle above 50%) and it comes out all right. Mostly. The blue is still too powerful and swamps the blue-green transition.

Why is the green almost invisible in the video? Is the CCD in the camera less sensitive to green? Is the green really a lot less powerful and my eyes just adjust to it?