Vehicle LED emblem

Projects General Guidance
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Hello everyone, new here and need some guidance on a project I am trying to complete. New also to arduino products. I have experience with doing custom automotive led lighting.

I have an emblem on my vehicle that I have 3D scanned and then reprinted in an attempt to have it light up with RGB LEDs. I was looking in attempt at using neopixels to do so, with also using a Bluetooth controller.

I need some guidance and/or confirmation that I on the right track with the parts I need to make this happen.

I have chosen
NeoPixel 5050 RGB LED with Integrated Driver
Adafruit feather nRF52832. If a smaller feather can be used to save as much space as possible I would like to do so.
And a step down, so the vehicle can supply power when acc is on.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

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Hi!

I made a quick sketch with my nano 33 BLE (wich has built-in RGB led and BLE module). It was easy setting up the color by putting a unique value into each of the 3 leds like:

analogWrite(LED_BLUE, value_for_blue);
analogWrite(LED_GREEN, value_for_green);
analogWrite(LED_RED, value_for_red);

Note color value ranges from 0 (light on) to 255 (light off) for an inverted LED.
Then, I create (with the help of the example sketch) a peripheral with 3 characteristics, one for each LED.
With nRF app on phone, I can access to the board through BLE and modify the value of each 3 characteristics independantly.

Here the nano itself was clearly the winning bundle as no additionnal hardware was required. But the built-in RGB led is not very powerfull, have a fixed location on the board, and therefore may not fit to your needs.

About the powering point, I dont get it. You plan to power your arduino board (and modules) with the car battery?
I am not in my field there, but if you know your needs, I am pretty sure a current converter from the 12V plug wont be more than few bucks. I hope some more sharp into electricity may have better advises (especially for safety).

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RGB led isn't the same as neopixel.

ESP32 has BT on board. A car isn't the most friendly environment for electronics. If you use more then one Neopixel, take WS2813. When one is corrupted, there isn't any problem for the neopixel after that place. If that occurs with WS2812(B) all behind that led is out.

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For power I would be tapping into the vehicles headlight harness, preferably the daytime running light wire, so essentially yes it would be 12v. So since the neopixels and board use 5v power source I would assume a inline “buck” or step down would work fine.

And everything would be weather proof or potted by design.

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