Boston College Campus School Visual Board

I made an LED that iterates through the letters of the alphabet with different colors with each press of an accessible button that can be switched out for different buttons as long as it has a 3.5mm stereo male audio cable. The inspiration for this project is from the Physical Computing class at Boston College, where one of the projects is building something for the campus school here at BC. My intention was to save the program money that will be using this LED, and this LED certainly cuts back on costs. Attached is a picture of a board from Amazon for pricing context, and this whole project cost me about $15. The point of the board is to act as a visual stimulant for students, especially those with limited mobility (that's the point of the accessible and switchable button).

This visual is ran on a Raspberry Pi Pico W.

Here is a video of the build fully functional: https://youtube.com/shorts/9dYUqZIc-is?feature=shared

1 x Breadboard

1 x Raspberry Pi Pico W

1 x 5v Battery with USB Port (can be lipo battery)

1 x USB cable

5 x Wires that plug into a bread board that can be clipped to an alligator clip

5 x Alligator clips

2 x Heat shrink to cover connections

1 x 16x16 LED Matrix Neo pixel board (I used this one on Amazon: BTF-LIGHTING WS2812B ECO RGB Alloy Wires 5050SMD Individual Addressable 16X16 256 Pixels LED Matrix Flexible FPCB Full Color Works with K-1000C,SP107E,etc Controllers Image Video Text Display DC5V)

1 x Female 3.5mm stereo audio jack

1 x 3.5mm stereo male audio cable with button of choice attached

2 x Velcro tape strips

Laser cut box (I used 1/8' birch wood for my box and laser cut dimensions slightly larger than the width/height than LED).

Add alligator-accessible wires to the bread board:

1 x GP15

1 x GP16

2 x Any Ground

1 x 5V

There are 2 sets of wiring, one for the button and another for the LED.

Slip heat shrink onto wires before connecting.

Female Button Jack: Connect ground of jack to one of the ground wires and signal to GP16

LED: Connect ground of LED to the other ground, DIN to GP15, and power to 5V.

Power the Pico by plugging in battery with USB cable.

The LED should light up with the letter A on the screen.

Press your button to iterate through the letters of the alphabet, it will just start back at "A" once button is pressed past "Z".

Here is the code file for the LED board.