Since we’re spending so much time at home these days, we’ve been trying to keep things interesting for the people passing by our house. We put a bear in the window for the neighborhood bear hunt. We’ve painted rocks. And we’ve done SO MUCH chalk art.
My kids tell me that this is a Roblox Noob. You’re welcome, dog-walkers & bike-riders of my neighborhood!
Recently, I had the idea that I could use my Arduino and some LED lights to make a small, changeable display in the window. I figured I’d start simple and cheerful and make a flower.
Here’s what I used:
- WS2811 individually addressable LED lights
- Arduino Uno, jumper wires, USB cable (I got everything from this Elegoo kit)
- Cardboard
- Exacto knife
- Duct tape & string
Back when I first got the Elegoo kit, I ran through some of their tutorial (accessed from this page) so that I could get familiar with how it worked.
And for the lights, I installed the FastLED library and spent a little time playing around with it. The library comes with a some fun example code like this:
Fast forward to last week. I had the Arduino, and I had the lights. I looked around the house for stuff to use to build a display in the window. Turns out, these days, we have a lot of cardboard.
I got to work cutting the rough shape of a flower.
Next I added some holes for the LEDs. In retrospect, I could have taken a few minutes to map out my number of lights to the number of holes I would need. (Spoiler alert: I had lights leftover at the end!) Maybe I’ll do that next time.
I continued the same process for the stem and leaves (which I duct taped together). And once I had all of my holes cut out, I added the lights. My last light was the center of the flower, then the flower, then the stem and leaves (and as mentioned before, some leftover lights at the start of the string).
Next I needed to write my code. Still using the FastLED library, I defined the start point of each group of lights in my display.
And using those groupings, I set the colors.
With the code ready, I used jumper wires to connect the lights to the Arduino, uploaded the code, and admired the results.
It took a little trial and error to get it to stay in the window, but a combination of duct tape and string has done the trick. And now we have something fun to brighten up the front of the house! I’m thinking we’ll change it out every week or two? I have a few more designs planned– we’ll see when I start to run out of ideas!
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