The WS2812 may look like a common 5050-sized (5x5mm) SMD LED, but an integrated control circuit is also embedded inside. Sometimes you don't need 10 or even 50, maybe you need a whole reel of 1000! If you are the person who needs that many then this is the perfect quantity for you. If you look really hard, you can see the tiny black chip hidden in there, along with minuscule gold wires connecting the chip to the LED. This LED is certainly more than meets the eye!

The LED itself is unlike most RGB (Red/Green/Blue) LEDs. The brightness of each color can be adjusted using a serial string to one of 256 different levels. You can produce any color from white to black (off), or salmon to sienna.