Our pilot mentioned that we reached a cruising altitude of over 30,000 feet. This prompted me to think of the expression, “30,000-foot view”. It’s a business cliche to be sure, but it’s chiefly an English unit one. 30,000 feet is about 9.1 kilometers. I have never heard anyone say, “Let’s take a 9.1-kilometer view of this business plan.” This is far as I want to go on the phrase a 30,000-foot view. I wanted to keep it at a high level, just cover the mountain tops.

Borrowing ideas from my Lofi Girl CheerLights Shadowbox project, George and I made a CheerLights Gift for under our Christmas tree. This gift changes color based on the latest CheerLights color and anyone on Twitter or Discord can change its color and the color of all of the other CheerLights projects.

The CheerLights Gift project is based on the Pimoroni Plasma Stick 2040 W and NeoPixel string lights for illumination. The Plasma Stick ships with CheerLights code main MicroPython file, so all you have to do is change the Wi-Fi network name and password. The microcontroller makes a request to the ThingSpeak API to get the latest CheerLights color, sets the color of the NeoPixel LED lights, waits 10 seconds, and repeats. This is about the fastest way to build your own CheerLights display.

I used a metal gift box that I found in a craft store to house the lights and controller. All we needed to do was stuff the LEDs inside and glue them in place. I only burned my fingers twice.

The project turned out well and kept my five-year-old’s interest for the duration of the build. I was happy that the Plasma Stick 2040 W made it really easy to get the project going.

Join the CheerLights IoT community at CheerLights.com.

I have been exploring MicroPython ever since I got a Raspberry Pi Pico W. The community is moving fast and making more and more examples and libraries for MicroPython. Having the Arduino team lean into making the Arduino Lab IDE for MicroPython is a good indicator where things are headed. I was able to build an awesome CheerLights display using MicroPython running on a Raspberry Pi Pico W connected to a Pimoroni Galactic Unicorn PED panel.

Consider Arduino Labs for MicroPython as pre-release, experimental software. Things are moving fast and the project will stabilize. Follow the project on GitHub and file any problems that you come across on GitHub Issues.

CheerLights is a fun way to get started with IoT, microcontrollers, and LED lights. If you know how to make CheerLights work, you can build some other awesome IoT projects. To make a Halloween-inspired project, you can take the CheerLights color and illuminate a pumpkin or even a… skull from Pimoroni.

Check out other Halloween CheerLights projects over at the CheerLights blog. Have fun with the idea and build something spooky and help spread the… fear.

For this season, I wanted to try out the Blinkt! kit from Pimoroni. I really what I am seeing from Pimoroni. Their starter kits and accessories for the Raspberry Pi are really well designed, colorful, and useful. If you are in the US, some of the Pimoroni kits are on Amazon.

I do recommend the Pimoroni Raspberry Pi Zero W Starter Kit if you are using the Raspberry Pi Zero W for the first time. The main reason for using a starter kit is that the ports on the Raspberry Pi Zero W need some adapters. You need to get a mini to full-size HDMI adaptor and a Micro-USB adapter to be able to connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the Raspberry Pi Zero W. The kit also includes a 16GB micro-SD card with an operating system pre-loaded.

Connect a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to the Raspberry Pi Zero W and connect the USB cable to a reliable 5V USB power supply and you are ready to start programming.

I followed Pimoroni’s getting started tutorial to install the Blinkt! python library. The Blinkt! board is a strip of LEDs that sit on top of the Raspberry Pi’s GPIO pins. Blinkt! is a cool way to get started with controlling things with the Raspberry Pi. Consider turning on the LEDs for the first time using code as your “Hello World” program for physical computing.

After connecting your Raspberry Pi Zero W to your Wi-Fi network, open a terminal window and enter the following comment to install the Blinkt!~ libraries (type ‘y’ or ‘n’ when prompted).

curl https://get.pimoroni.com/blinkt | bash

Create a new file in your home directory called “cheerlights.py”. This file will contain the code that gets the latest CheerLights color on ThingSpeak and sets the color of the Blinkt! LEDs. Copy this code into the “cheerlights.py” file and save it.

python cheerlights.py

After a few seconds, you should see the latest CheerLights color on the Blinkt!

To keep the “cheerlights.py” running all of the time, you need to add the script to crontab. This will make the script stays running in case of an error or reboot of the device.

sudo crontab -e

Then, add this line to the end of the crontab file and save the file.

@reboot sleep 60 && sudo python /home/pi/cheerlights.py

A couple of years ago, I noticed that a maker space along with Qwirkshop created a desktop light kit for the Raspberry Pi Zero W and Blinkt! board. The kit was sold for a brief time on Etsy and I picked up a few kits. Well, I just found them in my storage closet! The kit is a bunch of laser cut pieces that you assemble together. It is an ingenious kit in that it was designed in layers and holds together with no glue. The results were beautiful.

Let me know if you build something to display the latest CheerLights color. I am always looking for new ideas for the CheerLights blog.

Let’s stay connected!