Touch-Activated, Pulsating LED Heart Valentine’s Card #valentinesday
Here’s another great Valentine’s project, this time by Ian Lesnet on DIY Life. Put your Cadsoft Eagle software to good use!
What’s the perfect gift for the special someone that puts up with a soldering iron in the kitchen and little bits of wire underfoot? How about this touch activated, pulsating LED heart? This geeky Valentine’s Day card pays homage to the musical greeting cards that are popular this time of year. This isn’t just for Valentine’s Day — it’s a simple heart, so give it to your loved one any time of the year. You can also make your own shapes using the same basic circuit.
A microcontroller pulses the LED heart for a few seconds when the touch switch is activated. After the fade routine, the microcontroller enters a power saving sleep mode. The card runs from a single button cell battery. A battery should last a long time because little power is consumed in the sleep state.
Happy Valentine’s Day from Adafruit! Today we are highlighting our favorite heart-shaped electronics projects. We have lots of excellent projects to let your loved one know that you care. Be sure to check out our gift guide as well!
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.
Python for Microcontrollers — Python on Microcontrollers Newsletter: CircuitPython Day Friday, Python Still #1 and much more! #CircuitPython @micropython @ThePSF @Raspberry_Pi