I found this from Hackaday Answers. I have never ordered
from the ebay store so while I don't have any reason to
distrust them, use at your own risk.

http://stores.shop.ebay.ca/bestshop2008 ... ec0Q2em322

I suppose if you could spray them with something
you could get something like a "diffused" effect.

They also have 3mm led holders. The word
"display" sounds a little confusing so ask questions.

I only posted this for your benefit.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/50-pcs-3mm-Chrome-Me ... 1c0c4d4947

I found more sellers.

http://cgi.ebay.com/10x-3mm-Multi-RGB-F ... 45f2e11019

http://cgi.ebay.com/100x-3mm-RGB-Rainbo ... 5ad9094df6

I don't know why I couldn't find them before but the search words for google are:

3mm rgb led

Thanks for those links, but unfortunately they are useless for making POV displays, or game displays etc...

The reason being is that they only have two connections - anode and cathode. When you apply power to one of these, they just cycle through the various colours - you can't actually control the colours at all.

They must have some sort of tiny microchip embedded in them to make it cycle through the colours.

Here is the photo from their listing:


Here is a photo of the manual control rgb LED's with a common anode or cathode and then one leg for each red, green, blue segment:

Good looking out for us. Thank you for catching that.

He he, no problem!

I too found those when looking for bulk lots of RGB LED's and it took me a little while to figure out why they were just so cheap, then I found that they are not actually controllable.