Middlesex County, Ontario | tedbear - 1/14/2017 15:55
I'm thinking how I could build a heart shape lawn decoration for Valentines day but I probably won't have enough time. It might be built on a frame where the lights would light sequentially eventually forming a heart design. The routine could be expanded with all kinds of silly patterns.
Get an RGB LED strip off ebay! Something with ws2812b LEDs is ideal.
Basically its a whole bunch of RGB leds in a row. Each RGB LED has a built in little controller.
There's a single data line. You connect the data line to your Arduino and transmit a message. If the LED sees that the message is for a different LED, it passes the message on to the next one. If the LED sees that the message is for itself, it responds accordingly.
Basically you can hook up several hundred LEDs to a single Arduino pin (you also need to attach a beefy power supply), and set each one up with a different colour and brightness. The strips are about $3/foot and can come in a silicone jacket for outside use.
There's libraries like FastLED that make the sending messages part very simple. You can make the leds flash, glow, change color, chase colors around, etc all very easily. |
Anybody here fool around with Arduino projects
