The third installment of this learn guide from Erin St. Blaine is live, just in time for those late summer festivals. Add lights to your bicycle for visibility and style with NeoPixels:
I want to add lights to the frame that will animate in the same colors I painted the bike. I’m using NeoPixel strand lights at 2″ pitch, for a couple of reasons:
They are already 100% waterproof — each light is encased in plastic, and these lights are very hard to break
The strand-light style will allow me to wrap them around the bike frame, decorating it like a Christmas tree. I can get lights on all sides of the bike really easily.
The spread between the pixels means I can cover the whole bike using fewer lights than if I were to use a NeoPixel strip. This means my batteries will last a lot longer, since I’m driving fewer pixels. My hope is that this strip will last through several nights of use without having to change the batteries.
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 7:30pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
