Last year a NeoPixel ring with 24 LEDs blinked in our Christmas tree. I presented it on the last MakerFaire Hannover, but unfortunately it was too close to the Tesla coil on our booth, and it stopped working. To be prepared for this year’s Christmas I ordered new rings from Watterott – not one, but three: 16, 24, and 32 LEDs.
Posts Tagged ‘LED’
Last weekend the MakerFaire Hannover 2014 took place, and the Arduino Group Hannover attended the Faire. Again Watterott was one of the exhibitors – it was clear, that this will be an expensive weekend ;-).
One of the things I bought was the NeoPixel Ring from Adafruit – a very nice toy!
In this article I will extract some of the documentation in the original neopixel library, so that I (and perhaps you) have it in one place without the disturbance of the actual code.
Next in LoL Shield history: a sort of “growth simulation”:
- Place a particle (say: light a LED) at a random place on the shield.
- start a new particle at (0, 0).
- move this particle randomly; north, south, east or west.
- if the particle hits a placed one, fix it at its last free place.
- repeat from 2. until (0, 0) is occupied.
- then blink the result, clear the screen and start at 1.
If the movement crosses a border then move to the other side. Mathematically spoken: we are on a torus.
First a short video
For a long time I’m addicted to blinking LEDs, so it was only natural to buy a LoL Shield by Jimmie P. Rogers. I ordered it at Watterott and – as usual – they delivered very quickly. With trembling hands I unpacked the parts – and decided to wait until tremor disappeared. After reading some descriptions of the assembly and watching this recommendable video from Super Awesome Sylvia. I started to solder the 126 LEDs; a good exercise.
This is a new version of the evil spider. I’ve replaced the LED in the head with two smaller LEDs in the eyes. This way the brightening is easier to see.
Some close-up photos are at the end of this post – if you fear spiders, scroll slowly down to the image with breadboard 😉
(BTW: at 00:10 you can see Daniel)
The source code is rather simple:
