My daughter wants to line the top edge of her room with LEDs.
She came to me knowing that I have worked on LED projects before. Thankfully I have a brother-in-law who helps to run Maniacal Labs. They make an awesome product called the PiPixel that you can use with a Raspberry Pi Zero W to control LEDs and run some awesome animations.
It has been a while since I put the hardware together for a project and I was having some issues. Thankfully the forums on the site provided me a wealth of information to figure out my issue. Here is the thread that helped me out.
I love the chance to share technical projects like this with my daughter. It’s awesome to see her reaction when our hard work pays off and we get the result we hoped for. My plan is to get this initial LED setup running and then try to find some time to work with her to expand it. Ideally I would love to set up an API on the Pi that she can connect to and control the animations. From there I would love to help her create an app on her phone to change them whenever she wants.
That’s my big plan. I’ll try an keep you posted on the progress. For now enjoy the attached image of the strip running a beautiful rainbow animation.