Stranger Things project - FastLED help

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi! I'm working on making this awesome interactive light message wall from Stranger things:

Code here:

All working great, but I am looking for a way to make ALL the lights flicker/flash when a new message is received.

Alternatively, make all the lights flicker/flash when an exclamation point is entered.

I am pretty new to arduino and brand new to using fastLED and pixels. This code is above my level so I would appreciate any friendly suggestions. It is SUCH a cool project already and just hoping to learn how to work with it and add a little of my own ideas.

Thanks! Emily

2

All working great, but I am looking for a way to make ALL the lights flicker/flash when a new message is received.

If you want all the lights on at the same time then you need a much more capable power supply. Just like Instructables, Hackster projects tend to be written by beginners an in my opinion are normally poor projects, due to the almost lack of schematics.

I am pretty new to arduino

With the potential to cause a current overload you have to be very careful with a project like this. Add up how many lights you have and what current you have spare. Then divide the two to give you the amount of current per LED. You have to split this over the three colours as well, so primary colours make the most of current you have. A colour value of the maximum, that is 255 will take about 20mA per LED. You have to throttle that down to meet the current per LED you have.

and brand new to using fastLED and pixels.

Get a short strip of about 6 to 8 and experiment with the example in the fastLED libiary to get the hang of how to use them.

3

That is a very involved project and you need "do it for you" help.

Good luck. The person who made it would know what to change and what to avoid without studying the whole code but hey you never know who might run with it here? Just don't be disappointed if you don't get many takers. The bit you need shouldn't be so much but the whole that has to be dealt with to get there is not so small.

See, Mike found a caveat before I could finish typing this.

4

I noticed you already placed a comment on the site:-

By the way, love the description - No soldering, no advanced skills, and NO Barb!

The no soldering bit is one of the poorer aspects of the project. Twisting wires together and wrapping it in tape it not a very reliable technique for a long life. At the least solder the wires once you have twisted them together.

5

Looking at that video I immediately had to think of it as an electronic version of an ouija board... with Halloween in a few months you may have a lot of fun with it :slight_smile: