New Guide: Glowing LED Bullwhip with Motion & Sound Reaction
This week we’re saddened to learn of the death of Ennio Morricone. Morricone was an Italian composer, most famous for his work on Western movie soundtracks. His Spaghetti Western scores are iconic and unique, and really defined the genre. That lonely cowboy music that plays in your head whenever you think of a Western — that was Morricone. The world has lost a fabulous artist. We would love to dedicate our newest project tutorial to his legacy.
Complete your Cowboy (or Space Cowboy) cosplay with this interactive LED Bullwhip build from Erin St. Blaine. This build uses a Feather nRF52840 Sense board and PropMaker Wing attached to a 6 foot leather whip. Two strands of sturdy NeoPixel dots provide the light. This is a fully usable, crack-able whip that fires animations both when the whip cracks (sound reactive) and when the whip swings (motion reactive).
From the guide:
This whip is made from a Feather NRF32840 Sense board soldered to a PropMaker wing. It’s got sound reactivity – whenever the whip cracks, a bright animation lights up the whole length of the whip.
But we can do you one better n’ that. This whip’s also got motion sensitivity, with two levels of swing-based animations, triggered by the motion of your arm. Choose your own custom colors and speeds to truly make it yours.
This project requires a bit of tricky solderin’ and a bit of patience. But the end result will complete you, and feed that little outlaw in your soul.
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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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