LED Programming Workshop Documentation and Resources #NeoPixels
Wowee – huge thanks to Dr. Phillipa Gill for alerting us to this resource on GitHub!! Dr. Gill writes:
As part of the workshop I bring in some LED projects that I work on in my spare time to get the students excited about using programming to be
creative.
Here is a picture of a column of ~4,800 LEDs that I brought in when we offered the workshop for Girls Inc. a group that gets high school girls engaged with a variety of STEM fields at U. Mass.
Documentation and resources for running a middle/high school level workshop on programming LEDs.
Materials developed by Phillipa Gill & Ivan Lee. Based on materials by Ben Marlin.
Please contact us if you have questions or want to contribute edits to the materials.
The workshop is designed to use an Arduino Uno with a short length of AdaFruit Neopixel LEDs.
Documentation contains instructions for the lab exercises
Labs contains solutions to the different labs
Presentations includes introduction presentations as well as a training slide deck for volunteers.
Software contains the relevant software add-ons. Specifically, we have modified the ArduBlock visual programming tool to include basic functions for manipulating LEDs. You can use this version by copying the ArduBlock Jar File (e.g., ardublock-beta-GirlsInc-v2.jar) into the Arduino/tools/ArduBlockTool/tool directory. Once you have done this, you can see the ‘ArduBlock’ block tool in the tool menu in your Arduino program.
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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.
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