Week 9: Output devices

So after going back and forth on it, I think I will use Neopixels for my final project. They are flexible, bright and popular to use; they're likely the kinds I would use in the future. Neil had said in lecture it would be expensive, but realistically, I wouldn't need that much since it is just for my helmet. I ordered my neopixels and in combination with my devkit board and microphone, I worked on this week's assignment.

I initially milled and stuffed a mini "RBG LED" board (see below), but realized I had misrouted the power and ground! ! Luckily, my neopixels arrived that day so I could work with what I was going to use in my actual project.



The neat thing about the neopixels was that they came in its own silicon shell! It was great to realize they would be protected. Also, seeing them in person and reading about them made me better understand the concept of a individually-addressable LEDs. Each LED is basically the same as the RGB ones in the fablab inventory, but they come on a board with its own microcontroller. So you can address each LED to have its own "assignment"! This is attainable to make with lab inventory, of course, but for the purposes I would need would be a bit tedious.

I soldered a strip of neopixels to a breakout neopixel board I made.



I designed it with 3 strips in mind, although in hindsight, it wouldn't been betetr to have them on a curve, as they were going to curve over the helmet.

At any rate, I used codes from Adafruit and other libraries to write and modify a code.





hopefully including that music won't get this video taken down for copyright or anything.... haha.

Final Notes and Lesson Learned

1. Neopixels are cool! I'm excited to use them and love that they are flexible.
2. Adafruit libraries are a godsend for newbies--I should've been exploring them way earlier.