RGB LED Matrix Animation Library

Description

Maybe my Google-fu is getting rusty, but I scoured the Internet looking for good examples of animations for my addressable RGB LED strip matrix and found little that was useful to me. I found FastLED as a good place to start, but the only good example animations I found were the FastLED ones. Many examples were specific to a particular type of LED strip or size matrix.

With all of the led matrices out there, I believe it will be useful to have a rich set of open source animations in github for these displays.

The hardware for this is simple. An Arduino or compatible board, two buttons for the options, and an RGB LED matrix. One button will change the animation and the other will change the colors to keep them a little more interesting.

I have a good example of this mounted under the top bunk bed, kids like it, so I'll consider this a contribution to the STEAM initiatives that are out there to get kids interested in, science, technology, engineering, art, and math.

Components

1 × Arduino Pro Mini

2 × Push Button

1 × RGB LED strip matrix supported by FastLED

Project Logs

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Lightning Bugs
robbie nichols • 04/09/2016 at 03:12 • 0 comments

Today I cleaned up some of my code to make it easier to add animations to the library. I haven't tested it yet, so it might all fail miserably. I couldn't find much info about the flashes that fireflies make for this animation. Here is the best info I found: https://legacy.mos.org/fireflywatch/virtual_habitat. It basically says that the color, duration, number of flashes, and interval all vary.
Hardware Install
robbie nichols • 04/08/2016 at 00:47 • 0 comments
The example installation is close enough to call it complete. The Controls and power supply are in place in a little box I made out of plywood. The lights are installed under the top bunk and the light diffuser is installed. That was a simple rectangle frame I made out of plywood with a sheet stretched over it and stapled upholstery style.
These are the things that I have left to do:
- remove the duct tape that fell off that is currently under the diffuser.
- replace the arduino uno with an arduino pro mini.
I made a few mistakes along the way:
- stretched the sheet too tight in the middle of my rectangle frame. It is slightly concave. You can probably see it in the video above.
- taped the ends of my LED strips to add some more support. Now that the tape has fallen off, I have to remove it.
- I split some wood in the control box, and the plywood was slightly bowed before I put it together. It all still works fine, but next time I will use a drill before I screw it in (I usually don't cut that corner) and I'll start with wood that isn't bowed.
Diffuser frame with sheet:
LEDs without the diffuser: