Build Instructions

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• 1

  Set up Raspberry Pi for use (virtual access recommended)

  If your SD card does not come pre-loaded with Raspbian or Raspberry Pi OS, put it on your SD card using Raspberry Pi Imager

  Insert SD card into Raspberry Pi SD card slot, and connect mouse, keyboard, and monitor. Then plug in the power cable and follow the prompts on the screen.

  Once you are on the desktop, connect to your wifi and make note of the IP address which can be found by mousing over the wifi icon. Also go into the configuration setting and enable VNC connection. Now, you can access the PI through the software VNC Viewer on the computer of your choice, as long as both the computer and the Pi are on the same wifi network.
  

  For more detail and step by step instructions see the Youtube video linked here:
• 2

  Set up the wiring for the lights

  1. Get your lights. They should come with the lights and a separate JST connector. We won’t be using the JST connector that comes with the lights. The wires are braided and are not ideal for a breadboard. 
  2. Connect three MM jumper wires directly into the 3-pin connector on one side of the lights. The middle wire is data, and the wire on the two sides are power and ground (figure out which is which by looking at the nearest LED, or referring to the separate JST connector, where red is power)
  3. Add your batteries to the battery pack. Keep the battery pack switched off for now. (The red wire is power, black wire is ground.)
  4. Wire up the breadboard according to the diagram below. This is from the official Adafruit wiring guide, and you can see the “Raspberry Pi Wiring with Level Shifting Chip” section for more details. 

  For a step by step walkthrough, see the video here starting at 6:15:
• 3

  Install required software libraries and project code

  1. Clone the github repo with all the code for this project at https://github.com/keeratS/WECEtechmusiclights. 

     git clone https://github.com/keeratS/WECEtechmusiclights.git

     Execute the above command in a terminal while in the intended destination folder (where you want the code for this project to be located).

  2. Verify that you have python 3 installed by running the following commands in a terminal. You should see that you have some version 3.6-3.8. 

     python3
     exit()

  3. Again in a terminal, make sure that pip is updated (works for python 3.6 and 3.7, be sure to replace “python3.6” with the correct python version) 

     curl -O https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py
     sudo python3.6 get-pip.py

  4. We will follow these instructions for the rest of set up. The essential parts of the process have been highlighted below, but if something doesn’t work as expected, we recommend checking the link for additional context and recommendations.
  5. Run the following commands to install the Adafruit_Blinka library that provides the CircuitPython support in python

     sudo pip3 install rpi_ws281x adafruit-circuitpython-neopixel
     sudo python3 -m pip install --force-reinstall adafruit-blinka

  6. If you have completed the hardware setup steps above, you can now test your lights. Make sure your pi is up and running, and turn on the battery pack.
  7. Navigate (cd) to the lights_test folder in the WECEtechmusiclights directory. You should see a file called neopixel_rpi_simpletest.py, which is an adapted version of Adafruit's test code. See the page linked in step 4 for the original code. 
  8. Run the test program using the following command. Use sudo to run all project code, as root access is required to access the pi peripherals. 

     sudo python3 neopixel_rpi_simpletest.py

     sudo python3 neopixel_rpi_simpletest.py 

  9. Your lights should start lighting up! Exit the program using Ctrl-C. 
  10. Feel free to explore the other lights programs in the same folder, the weather lights in the weather_lights folder, or code your own animations!

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