Looking for Easter Project Ideas

[Chris Savage]

I've done projects for Halloween, including flickering LED candles and of course my Halloween Pumpkin Project and Prop Dropper. For Christmas I have done Christmas Light Control, Christmas Tree Kit and even made laser-cut tree (not posted yet). But I'm looking for ideas for Easter. If you've seen the Halloween Pumpkin Project, I started with just basic light-up plastic pumpkins and modified them for the project.



For Easter, I obtained the following "Golden Eggs". The ones that have a clear top, I imagined maybe putting RGB LEDs in there. But I am at a loss for a good project. So looking for ideas.

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[Jeff_T]

Hi Chris, you mentioned led's Micropython has a NeoPixel driver built in. I thought about buying a short string from Amazon I need to look into it again, I think you have to buy some kind of terminator for the ends.

[Chris Savage]

Standard WS2812B RGB LED Strips (Sometimes called, NeoPixels) do not need a terminator on the end and can extended to quite a number of LEDs in the strip without changing the hardware. For example, if you have two 50 LED strips, you can join them into one 100 LED strip just by connecting them.

The way the NeoPixels work is there is GND and V_CC, then there is D_IN and D_OUT pins. The individual LEDs are connected together such that the GND / V_CC pins are common for each LED.

The signal goes to the first LED D_IN pin. That LED D_OUT pin connects to the next LED in the chain in the same manner. The system doesn't know / care how many LEDs are in the chain, but you only need one signal pin for that string, which is very nice.

I can send you some of the ones I have been using for projects. I think they have 8 or 9 pixels per strip and the 5 strips in the pack can be connected together. Then you could experiment with them.

I was thinking of using some in those smaller eggs, maybe. By the way, they come in round strips too, which can go around encoders for visual feedback or clock rings or whatever.