A sign for all times
The neopixels are controlled by the WLED app, to use this you need a WIFI connection. This is a sturdy construction, I have it lashed on my front balcony and it all works fine, it’s winter ready.
Parts and skills needed:
- 1 hula hoop, mine came from the dollar store and is 30 inches in diameter.
- 1 esp32 huzzah / 3405
- 2 1 meter neopixel strip (30 led) / 4801
- 1 5 volt power supply at least 2 amps / 4298
- nylon ties and electricians tape
The tools and skills needed are a glue gun and soldering iron.
The first thing I did was to strengthen the hoop by gluing the insert that was linking the ends with contact cement. Then I attached the vertical strip and huzzah to the hoop as so:
On the right photo a double layer of black tape is covering the huzzah, nylon ties are used to anchor the strip. The strips wires are soldered to the ground, 5 volt and pin 21 on my old huzzah.
This is the center were the soldering and surgery take place. Can you see the mistake I made here? The center strip should be pointing down (it still works fine but I’ll reverse it sometime).
First I cut a window in the vertical strip at the 15th led and soldered wires on the pads. Then I cut the second strip in half and soldered the wires from the center strip to them so that the last 15 led’s of the center and the two 15 led legs are working in parallel. Then I glued the legs at a 45 degree angle to the center strip and used two ties to strengthen it. After all is dried use ties to anchor the legs to the hoop. To power the huzzah cut a micro-c connector from a usb cable and connet it to the power supply with the lenght of wire needed ( i used a 20 foot lenght of speaker wire).
Now it’s programming time, hey it’s WLED powered just a setup is needed. A good way to do this is to go to Erin St Blaine’s guide Edge-Lit Tavern Sign at adafruit, within you will find an excellent tutorial on how to set up the huzzah and use the WLED app. Also check out her programming skills. During the WLED setup enter 30 for the number of pixels as both 30 led strips are connected in parallel.
Thanks to Erin and Limor adafruit and WLED for making this possible.