Chris wrote in:

I wanted to say thank you for writing your blog and the products you’ve created.  I used both to make my christmas lights this year.  Couldn’t have done it without you.

 

I used an ATmega xx8 mini dev kit programmed with an ISP shield to control a series of WS2811 LED pixels to make beautiful light. The controller is designed to be standalone, not part of a bigger system. I used a BCD thumbwheel switch to select up to 10 looks.

 

We can give credit to the FastLED Library team for the heavy lifting.  The case is from your friends at Adafruit. The target boards don’t quite fit in the Adafruit cases.  Thankfully ya’ll had the schematic PDFs posted and I saw I could literally cut corners to make them fit.

Back to why I appreciate what you do so much, growing up my dad tried to teach me about electronics.  He was putting motorola 6802 CPU’s in Sperry New Holland hay bale wagons.  Unlike how easy we have it today with Arduino he had to program in assembly…

 

I got a degree in Theatre and loved doing sound and lighting design.  So I really love the art you put into your technology. I’ve built many of your kits.  My favorite are the interactive LED panels.  Blinking lights!  I like to put them behind the ikea glass “white boards” so my ideas really shine when I write them down.  I’m looking forward to seeing what you do in 2015!