My son and I discovered FastLED late last year, and have been playing around with it. He wanted to program our Christmas tree lights, but of course, doesn’t know C well yet.
I put together a tutorial with lots of easy-to-follow comments, which let him get his head around both C and FastLED at the same time. The code has instructions for the hardware build as well, so hopefully it’s pretty complete.
I decided to share what I made, so if any of you know of a place to put tutorials like this, I’m happy to give it to whoever would enjoy it.
The code is on GitHub, and there’s a video on YouTube showing the build, which might make it easier for people who aren’t as familiar with wiring up an Arduino. (Like we were.
@Aaron_Cammarata Super comments and explanations you’ve added to the code. Having this example to point someone new to C and FastLED is great.
Since you’re using the breadboard in the setup it would be easy to add a resistor inline on the Data signal, and also add a capacitor across the pos/neg wires for the LEDs or as in the photo on this page:
These two additions are often recommended with these builds.
[I usually use a 470 ohm resistor and a 1000uF (16V or 25V) capacitor.]
You might also consider adding a simple wiring diagram image to github too. Even a simple hand drawn image that you scan or photo, because you know, pictures can be worth many words.
For the video, if you use YouTube’s video Enhancements and bump “Fill Light” up to +3 or +4 it might make fill in the darks a bit and make things a little easier to see.
Fantastic - thank you so much! I bumped up the Fill Light and added a Stabilizer. I’ll add the capacitor and resistor - good practice, especially the capacitor, and I’ll try to whip up a wiring diagram.
Nice project, but please consider redoing the wiring diagram in something like Fritzing (http://fritzing.org/home/)! About the use of a Data line resistor for WS2812 LED strips: Imo it is not necessary for 3.3V micros (or its value should be low, like 220 Ohm). I had problems on this project until I removed the resistor. Definitely add one for 5V micros though! https://github.com/HorstBaerbel/LightBook
Thanks, Bim - I was looking for a tool to do the wiring, and couldn’t find a free one, so I ended up using TinyCad, which was a bit of a nightmare. Wow - Fritzing is AWESOME. Thanks for the lead. I updated with a nicer wiring diagram. So much to learn!
