This past weekend a friend asked me to help with some simple LED “blinkies” for some craft items her young daughter was creating. This took me back to thinking, what’s easy and simple? A 555 timer of course! But all I ever did with those was create a square signal, LED flip-flops and the such. A short search later and I came across this page which has a bunch of other ideas, from different flashing patterns to some cool fades as well.
And yes, it’s outside of the scope of FastSPI. It’s just a reminder (to myself mostly) that you can still create some cool stuff with very simple circuitry. Not to mention cheap!
Great link; thanks for sharing it. It’s a good reminder that there’s more than one way to illuminate the cat.
On my foolish to-do list is:
- post a tutorial on how to wire up nothing but a battery, an cheap bare ATtiny85, and a smart pixel (or three).
Update: see also this ATtiny85-based “Throwduino” which uses an LED not only as a light output device, but also as a light sensor!
http://m.instructables.com/id/Throwduino-Basic-Light-Sensing-Flashing-Throwie-/
Component list: one ATtiny85, one LED, and one coin cell, period.
Wonder if I can make a WS2812B ‘straddle’ an ATtiny85…
For the Attiny85, you’d have to make an arbitrary choice on what pins to use, but it’s pretty damned easy: connect VCC and GND, connect the LED to whatever pins you want it connected to. Done.
However, the bigger issue is configuring the thing to use the internal oscillator, setting the BOD accordingly, and actually programming it.
As for the WS2812B … sure, just add some legs to, maybe with wrapping wire.