So I'm a total noob at electronics. But even though I can barely tell one end of a AA battery from another, I have an idea for a project I'd like to pursue, and I'm wondering if an ardunio board is the right tool for this.
I recently read a fantasy book (Tolkien's Silmarillion) about a world that had 2 trees as its light sources instead of a sun and moon. Instead of sunrise and sunset, these trees brightened and faded every day. I'd like to make an artistic clock with pictures of these trees growing brighter and dimmer in sync with the time.
So the basic goal is to make an analog clock with a face that lights up in different ways depending on what time it is. Here's my current plan:
Print out some artwork of the trees, like this, and glue or otherwise affix it to the face of the clock, behind the hands.
Drill numerous holes in the face of clock through the artwork wherever I want the trees to light up.
Affix led lights to the backside of the clock
? ? ?
Watch the pretty trees shine!
I'm wondering if an audrino board can help me figure what goes in that ? ? ? section... also I want it to be battery powered, is that possible for the led lights? They can be dim. In fact I want them to be pretty dim, because otherwise the clock would be too distracting. A faint glimmering would be fine.
Any Arduino can handle a few LEDs, but battery power is probably out of the question unless you are willing to use really large ones, or change them every week or two.
Start by getting an Arduino and work through some of the simple examples that come with Arduino -- read a switch, blink an LED without using delay, use PWM to dim an LED, etc. That way you learn the programming language and the special features of Arduino, and avoid endless frustration.
jremington:
Any Arduino can handle a few LEDs, but battery power is probably out of the question unless you are willing to use really large ones, or change them every week or two.
Then is there another battery powered light source I could use? I really want this to be cordless if possible.
Light is always a problem with battery powered devices, because producing light is such a drain on batteries.
To get an idea of the possibilities, think about all the battery powered consumer electronics you have around you, what sort of light they emit, the size of the batteries they carry and the battery lifetime.
I helped an artist with a similar project. She had a large, night sky painting and we poked ~20 pinholes through the canvas and taped individual WS23812 RGB leds behind each pinhole. A bit of wiring to connect them all together, but once done, the night sky twinkled, glowed, sparkled, etc. Ran the entire thing from a nano, but used a 5V 2A wall wart to power the thing. Batteries would not last long.
