Adafruit – About Things | A Hans Scharler Blog https://nothans.com Life, Comedy, Games, Tech, Marketing, and Community Thu, 31 Oct 2024 13:46:48 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://i0.wp.com/nothans.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cropped-settings.png?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Adafruit – About Things | A Hans Scharler Blog https://nothans.com 32 32 114568856 CheerLights IoT Projects https://nothans.com/cheerlights Wed, 30 Nov 2022 15:12:36 +0000 https://nothans.com/?page_id=3464 CheerLights is an “Internet of Things” project I created in 2011 to help teach people IoT concepts. I consider it a “Hello, World” project to learn IoT protocols, microcontroller programming, and LED light control. CheerLights is a global network of synchronized colored lights. Everyone subscribes to the latest CheerLights color, which sets their lights to the same color. The color is set on the CheerLights Discord Server by anyone.

Projects

For more about the history of CheerLights, read the article: The CheerLights Origin Story: Arduino, IoT, Twitter, and Community

]]> 3464 Adafruit Matrix Portal LED Display Diffused Acrylic Stand https://nothans.com/adafruit-matrix-portal-led-display-diffused-acrylic-stand https://nothans.com/adafruit-matrix-portal-led-display-diffused-acrylic-stand#respond Tue, 08 Dec 2020 19:27:39 +0000 https://nothans.com/?p=1642 I bought some parts over at Adafruit to build some ThingSpeak and CheerLights projects. If you know me, I am always attracted to multicolored lights and even more so around the holidays. Adafruit has simplified the way to work with LED matrix panels by offering a new device called the Adafruit Matrix Portal. The Matrix Portal connects to any HUB-75 compatible LED display and gives you Wi-Fi control, USB-C power, an accelerometer, and a processor to help you create animations and graphics. With all of these options, you can build anything from an On-Air sign to a kinetic sand toy.

LED panels are really bright without a diffuser. You can buy a diffuser to enhance the look of the display… if you remember to buy one. I found an 8×10 clear document frame stand at my house and remembered that I have Rust-Oleum Frosted Glass Spray Paint the I used for my arcade cabinet project. I sprayed on three coats of the frosted glass spray while allowing for each coat to dry for about 15 minutes.

Before and after applying the frosted glass spray

As an added bonus, the document frame also doubled as a stand for the Matric Portal display. The frosted glass enhancement turned out really well and greatly enhances the look of the LEDs.

Take a look at what Adafruit’s LED Sand demo looks like behind the diffused acrylic stand.

Adafruit Matrix Portal Sand Demo

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