Adafruit RGB Strip on stage with Black Eye Peas! Nate writes –

Hey Everyone,

After seeing the blog post regarding ‘My Robot is Better Than Your Robot’, I wanted to take a quick moment to brag about our robot, and to say how awesome the Addressable RGB Strips are. They even made their way onto the same stage as the Black Eye Peas.

I am the Electrical Team Mentor for the FIRST Robotics Team, Wildstang (FRC-111). While planning for the World Championship competition in St. Lous in April, our team decided we needed to spice up our robot with a little flair. I found the Addressable RBG Strips at Adafruit, and knew we had to use them.

Pairing 2 meters of them with a small Arduino board, and spending a few nights staring at the bright LEDs, we were able to pull off a few different patterns of LEDs, each signifying a specific mode of the robot (various autonomous sequences, ready-to-score, launch-sequence-activated, and dance-party). Needless to say, we were impressed.

While at the Championship event, we were notified that the special guests of the weekend, the Black Eye Peas, were having concert just for the FIRST participants, and that we were given the honor of having our robot on the stage with them. We knew this was our chance to show off both the engineering of our robot, and its cool new feature!

Our Robot in ‘Dance-Party’ mode!

The attached picture below shows the whole BEP stage, with our robot illuminated on the left!

This was definitely one of the highlights of our weekend…. that and managing to become the World Champions for 2011!

On Sunday, 8/14/2011 at 7::00pm ET, ABC will be broadcasting a special, presented by Will.I.am, all about his experiences at the St. Louis championship, including the concert. I would not be surprised to see some great footage of the RGB Strips in action!

Thanks again for the great product and support!
-Nate Troup
WildStang Robotics (FRC111)
http://www.wildstang.org