This was a gift for my two year old nephew. Since he is a fan of lights and buttons, I wanted to make something blinky for him to enjoy. The concept was simple: make a clear box with buttons and lights that would change color and pattern based on the buttons that were pressed.
Check out the full blog post with photos and build documentation!
Featured Adafruit Products
Digital RGB LED Weatherproof Strip 32 LED – (1m) – These LED strips are fun and glowy. There are 32 RGB LEDs per meter, and you can control each LED individually! Yes, that’s right, this is the digitally-addressable type of LED strip. You can set the color of each LED’s red, green and blue component with 7-bit PWM precision (so 21-bit color per pixel). The LEDs are controlled by shift-registers that are chained up down the strip so you can shorten or lengthen the strip. Only 2 digital output pins are required to send data down. (read more)
Arcade Button – 30mm Translucent Red – A button is a button, and a switch is a switch, but these translucent arcade buttons are in a class of their own. They’re the same size as common arcade controls (often referred to as 30mm diameter) but have some nice things going for them that justify the extra dollar. (read more)
Waterproof Metal On/Off Switch with Red LED Ring – 16mm Red On/Off – These chrome-plated metal buttons are rugged and waterproof and look real good while doing it! Simply drill a 16mm hole into any material up to 1/2″ thick and you can fit these in place, there’s even a rubber gasket to keep any water out of the enclosure. (read more)
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
