Windows app to control colour of LED light strip

Projects General Guidance
1

I'm about to conduct a research experiment and part of it involves a small number of office worker participants who need to be able to click a button on their PC/laptop (Windows 8 or Windows 10) in order to control the colour of an LED light strip that will be connected to their desk.

These are non-techie users and won't be familiar with Arduino, so I reckon it needs an app that just presents in a small window 4 buttons: Red, Yellow, Green, Off and when they click the button the light strip changes colour, or switches off, accordingly.

I'm not familiar with Arduino, but have been looking for a reason to learn as I think it's an exciting area, and this might be a good fit. I'm hoping this is possible so if someone could point out what hardware I need and the high-level approach to follow and links to any relevant guides, I would really appreciate it.

2

It's relatively easy to communicate between Windows apps and an Arduino via a USB cable. Straightforward enough in principle to send a letter say r,y,g,o from an app (I've done similar in Python), and since that's just a string, it's easily read by the Arduino and used in an "if" or "switch case"to control the Arduino's output pins.

There's a ready-made solution to the Arduino side, right here.

Windows side we'll leave to you :slight_smile: