I've been working with the NeoPixels for years,

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1

I’ve been working with the NeoPixels for years, and am just now getting into the FastLED library.

I’m building a simple blinky, with 4 buttons and 4 LEDs. If you press button 1, LED 1 lights up red… button 2, LED 2 lights up green… 3 is blue and 4 is yellow. If the buttons, LEDs, and color assignments are each an array, I should be able to have a super simple for loop to run it all (right?).

My arrays are:
CRGB leds[4];
uint8_t button[] = {10, 11, 12, 13}; //button pins

So, I’d like to do something like this:
colorVar[] = {“Red”, “Green”, “Blue”, “Yellow”};

There isn’t a variable type that can do this, right? Right now I have 3 more arrays, for red, green, and blue:
uint8_t red[] = {255, 0, 0, 255};
uint8_t green[] = {0, 255, 0, 255};
uint8_t blue[] = {0, 0, 255, 0};

and am setting the LEDs in the for loop like this:

leds[i].setRGB(red[i], green[i], blue[i]);

But I’d really like to have a single value, to do something like this:
leds[i] = CRGB::colorVar[i];
or
leds[i].setRGB(colorVar[i]);

I’d be happy using a single integer or web code (0xFF0000) if the words can’t be stored as variables, but not sure how. Can it be done simply?

THANK YOU

2

You can save the values as the CRGB data type. You can reference colors like CRGB::Red, CRGB::Violet, etc.

3

So;
leds[i] = CRGB::Red;

4

Is there a way to have the color be a variable stored in another array? Here’s my ideal code (below), but clearly the bColor[] array can’t be char, or else can’t use words.

Thanks!

#include <FastLED.h>
#define NUM_LEDS 4
#define DATA_PIN 9

CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];
uint8_t button[] = {10, 11, 12, 13}; // buttons on pins 10-13
char bColor[] = {“Red”, “Green”, “Blue”, “Yellow”}; // char will not work for this

void setup() {
FastLED.addLeds<NEOPIXEL, DATA_PIN>(leds, NUM_LEDS);
}

void loop() {
for (int b = 0; b < 4; b++){
if (digitalRead(button[b]) == HIGH){
leds[b] = CRGB::bColor[b];
}
else if (digitalRead(button[b]) == LOW){
leds[b] = CRGB::Black;
}
FastLED.show();
}
}

5

Use CRGB bColor[] = {CRGB::Red, CRGB::Green, CRGB::Blue, CRGB::Yellow}; (I’m assuming those basic colors are defined), then use them by leds[b]=bColor[b];

6

Working with HSV might simplify things.

Try changing this this:
colorVar[] = {“Red”, “Green”, “Blue”, “Yellow”};
to this:
uint8_t colorVar[] = {0, 96, 160, 64}; // Hue red, green, blue, yellow

and also update:
leds[b] = CRGB::bColor[b];
to:
leds[b] = CHSV(colorVar[b], 255, 255); // hue, saturation, value

More info on FastLED HSV:

7

Excellent suggestions – thank you! I’m loving this library.