We’ve got a new tutorial from Erin St Blaine: Make an LED jellyfish umbrella with NeoPixels and a QT Py Pico W. It’s easy to add lots of complex animations and color changes using WLED, a free LED control software that works over your wifi network. Create presets and playlists of animations in your software and they will run automatically, even when you’re not near Wifi.
Make a jellyfish umbrella with animated lights, with no coding required. This is an intermediate project that gives you advanced results. The software is simple to load and use. Hundreds of animations and color combinations are available right through your fingertips, using any web browser or the free WLED app on your phone. The trickiest part of this tutorial is the wiring. There are a lot of connections to make and some challenging soldering to do, but the rest of the build is fairly easy. Make your jellyfish dance and flow with lights, tentacles, and iridescence. This project would make a great camp “totem” for festivals, or a wonderful costume if it’s built onto an umbrella hat. It’s also easy to synch two or more jellyfish together over wifi using WLED.
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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.
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.
