hk1972:
An old friend of mine has a model of Jules Verne's Nautilus in the grips of a giant squid that he always talks about how he wishes it were illuminated but never had the ability. I thought a great 75th birthday present for him (and a challenging intro to the world of Arduino for me) would be to use an Arduino Nano and some LEDs to provide a couple of animated lighting effects.He sees the exterior as having a shimmering blue/green underwater look while the interior gives the appearance of an unseen person moving around from room to room and back, carrying a lantern.
I thought it would be an added bonus to also make the interior flash red at the push of a button to simulate an emergency alarm.
My goal was to accomplish the following events by pressing pressing a button 1 to 3 times:
1st press - Turn on water shimmer and invisible lantern carrier effects
2nd press - Replace invisible lantern carrier effect with red emergency lighting
3rd press - Turn off all lightingFor the water effect I thought of using a slightly modified version of some code I found on this site under the topic, "Fading multiple LEDs at Different Rates" response #5
For the invisible lantern carrier effect, I thought of modifying an LED chase to slow down and fade the LEDs. I haven't found that code yet.
I also still don't quite understand how to combine all three push button phases in a single sketch
This project has not had the attention it deserves from me and although I started researching about two months ago, I work 12+ hrs/day and 5 to 7 days/wk, which hasn't left me enough time to spend on it and his birthday is approaching too rapidly (May 29th).
I either need find help compiling the code or, sadly, hang my head and admit defeat. I'm desperately hoping to avoid the latter.
Either way, I appreciate all the information this site provides as well as all those who have contributed their knowledge.
I would highly recomend that you get a hundred cheap LED's to paractic with.
check out CrossRoads web for this device
MAX7219 daisychainable breakout board
http://www.crossroadsfencing.com/BobuinoRev17/
not quite 2/3 of the way down
if you can get a couple LED's to turn on and off in your patterns, things would make more sense for you.
as for the chase of lights, that is not that hard, but you have to have the LED's with quantities.
I do not completly follow your needs, but if you were to look at a model house, you could have an LED light up one room, fade up, then down, and while it is fading down, the next room is fading up, then as that fades down, the light on the stairs fades up and ....... that would make it looks like someone with a candle or lantern is walking the halls.
you did not mention the size of the model. size is key as a huge LED might not fit and a grain of sand LED might not offer enough light.
as for the buttons, that is the easiest part.
what Arduino do you have to start with ?