Neopixel Stair Lights

Using Arduino Project Guidance
1

I've upgrade my stair lights to addressable LED's, I have 240 of them on one 4ft strip, I've managed to have them light up in the proper direction using colorwipe (Bottom IR light from bottom to top) and vice vera using neopixel library. But for the last 3 weeks I've been trying to get them to light up using "colorwipe" at a medium brightness and then random sparkle i.e one led at the time at full brightness for around 50 milliseconds and repeat for 10-15 seconds, and then colorwipe back to 0,0,0 (Black).

Does this sound feasible or am I wasting my time? I'm not great with programming so if it is possible some guidance would be much appreciated.

2

What have you tried so far? With these strips, while each LED is individually programmable, if you want to change one of them you need to write out the entire state of the strip again.

3

I've tried modifying some examples online and inserting code from https://www.tweaking4all.com/hardware/arduino/adruino-led-strip-effects/ namely the snow sparkle sketch. all i get is one random led flash and it loops again, I've since admitted defeat and deleted all of the sketches to get a fresh start from start. i was hoping it would be as simple as inserting something like "if (irUpState == HIGH) {" then go to the next line and do whatever is there, but it doesn't seem as simple as that.

4

You really need to have a go and then post your code along with the behaviour it produces.

5

I'll give it another shot, if I fail again (I'm sure I will) I'll come back with the failed code. Thank you for your help.

6

Start with something simple and then build on that.

7

davidrh:
Start with something simple and then build on that.

that was a good hint, I've managed to do it now, I started by making it simple without the sparkles etc and then built on that. It now works better than the way I first thought. I'll remember that from now on. It is easier to build on a simple sketch rather than trying to reach all of the goals at once.

8

It is easier to build on a simple sketch rather than trying to reach all of the goals at once.

Absolutely. You will find that most Arduino projects are a collection of simpler things collaborating together to do something more complex. Start with getting all of the simple things working by themselves, and then slowly bring it all together. That way, things can only go wrong a little bit at a time, and you can back up to where it was working and try again. You'll find it a less frustrating way to do things.