I have been working on my Halloween pole for a few weeks now. I started with a little knowledge of arduinos but almost none of FastLED. A big thanks to the great community of folks here who helped me get the project working. I look forward to trying even more advanced stuff with FastLED.
My pole has 300 WS2812s wrapped around an aluminum shower curtain rod, which is in turn inside a plastic tube usually used to cover fluorescent lights. To make the plastic tube more rigid, I designed and 3D printed a “slinky” that had an inside diameter that matched the aluminum tube, and an outside diameter that matched the plastic tube. I wrapped the entire length of the staff with that coil, and now the whole thing feels really solid.
The pole basically plays four animations from the demoreel100 - fire, confetti, cylon, and juggle - plus a pulsing animation I created. All except the fire animation have custom palettes attached. The animations are cycled through with a button press, but in this case, the “button” is a wireless relay panel, so the animations can be triggered remotely. There are four relays - two go to the arduino nano controlling the pole lights, and two go to another arduino nano controlling the skull. Only one of the relays is in use right now, to change the patterns, but everything’s wired up to allow expandability. One of the relay buttons triggers a camera strobe, which is mounted inside the skull.
The pole is rechargeable - I dismantled a USB powerbank, designed and 3D printed carriers to put the batteries inside the tube, and then designed a cap that contains the charging board, the two nanos, and the main power switch, as well as the relay panel.
As a FastLED project, this is pretty simple - I mostly used existing code for the animations, button selection, and palettes - but it’s a pretty solid build, and I’m pretty proud of it for a first effort. Thanks again to everyone who helped!
