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Best answer by TDK

Is this a custom board? Any GPIO pin can drive an LED at at least a few milliamps. Most pins can do 25mA, PHx and PC13-15 are less powerful.

2 replies

TDK
TDKBest answer
Super User
October 27, 2020

Is this a custom board? Any GPIO pin can drive an LED at at least a few milliamps. Most pins can do 25mA, PHx and PC13-15 are less powerful.

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gregstm
Senior II
October 28, 2020

Yes. You can use most GPIO pins - and if you use high efficiency leds it is amazing how little power you need to drive them, so if your application requires long battery life you can get away with 1 milliamp or less. Red and yellow leds have a lower forward voltage drop (eg. 1.2V) and can allow the whole system to work at lower voltages (eg. 2.4V ).

I think it is sometimes helpful to work in reverse - think of all the other things you might want to use (eg. ADC, DAC, I2S, UART, wakeup pins,...) and choose GPIO pins that are not required by these peripherals. Nothing says "Hello World" better than a flashing Led - simple flashing leds has helped me debug many projects over the decades....