Colorize: Light Strip
In this activity, the children can press the red, green, and blue buttons to light up a light on the LED strip. Filling up the light strip causes a short light show to happen. Musical notes will then play corresponding to each color. Multiple buttons can be pressed to combine the colors and get new notes. All three buttons pressed will make white light which is silent and can break up the music. There is provided music notation that will play a few common children's songs and provide the notes of each color. You can also turn on and off the sound using the small red touch panel on the back of the hardware.
Supplies
● LED Strip w/ Clear Acrylic Hardware
● USB-A to USB-B cable
● USB-A Wall Charger (12w or at least 1.5 amps needed to properly power the hardware)
● One 2-prong wall outlet
● Supplied Music Notation
You will also need a screw driver as well as some items listed in the CSV attached below
Do the Laser Cuts
Do the laser cuts on 1/4 inch cast acrylic. You can choose to etch our logo as well on one of the sides
Attach All the Hardware
You will need to screw the Arduino in the bottom.
Screw in the capacitive button. (Please add the appropriate headers as well)
Make sure you wire the resistors to the buttons as well.
The resistor used is the 220-ohm resistor.
Please note that the toughest thing to wire is the button itself.
There are four nodes on the button. + and - are for the Led which needs a 220-ohm resistor. and the two terminals on top are your switch which becomes a closed circuit when the button is pressed.
the button connects to 5V, GND, and digital input.
Check the photos on how I did the wiring for the buttons personally
The Wiring
Please follow the wiring from the tinker cad linked below
You can also power the LEDs from 3.3V when you run out of 5V pins or slots
Our setup requires 16 LEDs from the Adfruit Light strip
Downloads
Upload the Code
Download the files and open them in the Arduino IDE
Upload them to the Arduino
The device should work right away. The sound is on by default.
You will need some external Libraries
- Wire
- Fast LED v3.50
- SparkFun_CAP1203 v1.05
(Optional) Cut Out Some Tunes
Print the pdf below on A4 paper. Cut the strips and you should get 3 strips.
Each of these strips plays a different tone.