I'm new to this stuff and want to make a project using an Arduino UNO to control several things.
The first is a set of LED's (Green in image for reference) that will change brightness back and forth based on the time of day. I am making this project for my wife who is moving to Germany for a few months. This will let her know the time of day when I am awake back home for calls and when she is being thought of. I can kind-of do this via the Fading.ino that comes in the basics examples.
I was thinking about having something that has a timer programmed in that can be set for the time difference between the countries. I could get a Real Time Clock Module and put that in, set it for my timezone and then it will work as intended when plugged in. Does that sound about right?
The second is a scrolling LED (Red in image for reference) message board that can show different preprogrammed messages per day.
I have seen some scrolling message boards online that I can reproduce, but I would like to control both options with one Arduino. Does anyone know if this is possible and what the code might be?
Can I run the two off of one UNO or do I need to have one for each?
You could do that and display both the time here and in Germany at the same time. You will have some space on the display you could add the date as well. Adding the LEDs at that point would be straight forward. You could also add some messages that pop up each day. Using a 4 line LCD display would give you a lot of other things you can do.
I suggest to you that a dimming LED will be a poor indicator. It is hard to look at an LED and see where it might be in a slow cycle of din to bright.
I would use a few LEDs and have perhaps three time periods a day, red sleeping yellow at work green neither of those, or something like that.
Anyway, ideas you can come up with.
If you literally know nothing about programming, I recommend starting with some very basic coding.
Turn an LED on when you are pressing a button, and off if you aren't.
Turn an LED on when you press a button, and off when you press it again.
Use a pushbutton to turn on and off a blinking LED
Believe it or not, ppl come here with dozens of lines of code they wrote, borrowed or stole who couldn't begin to do those three simple sketches.
The IDE has examples starting from zero. Work through them, google can help.
And to eliminate one source of expense and complications, you could do the three sketches using the wokwi simukator, free and easier to use than fiddling with bread boards and real components:
Don't expect instant success - take your time, build up from the basics and sooner later you'll wonder why it seemed so hard.
