An Arduino-Python interface for controlling a set of 26 LEDs above different letters on a wall (much like the ones from the first season of Stranger Things).

Features:

• can do words or patterns
• can set presets to quickly swap between patterns
• comes with 5 preset patterns, including a Tetris sequence and a bouncing light
• can manually change how long the LEDs spend on/off
• can sync light changes with your currently playing song (Spotify integration)
• can repeatedly spell out the name of the currently playing song (Spotify integration)

The Python control script requires pyserial. It also requires the latest version of spotipy if Spotify integration is desired.

This requires quite a lot of wire, about £20 worth. Each LED needs to be connected (with a resistor) to one of the digital i/o pins from 22 to 48 on the Arduino, where 22 is "a", 23 is "b" and so on. A recommended setup is to have a Raspberry Pi connected which has SSH capabilities, that way you can use your phone to change the lights.

• flash the Arduino firmware to an Arduino Mega (Mega because it has more digital i/o pins and larger flash memory for storing patterns)
• connect a device with Python installed to the serial port of the Arduino
• run the Python script

Note that you may need to manually change the serial port at the top of the control.py code.

The control script accepts single line commands once running.

The following will cause the LEDs to flash the word testing:

testing

The following will cause the LEDs to alternate between flashing "a" and "b" at the same time, followed by "c" and "d":

a,bc,d

The comma is used to add an extra letter to that display section, can be chained as many times as you want. For example, the following will flash between alternate letters:

a,c,e,g,i,k,m,o,q,s,u,w,yb,d,f,h,j,l,n,p,r,t,v,x,z

Presets can set using the "#p" command, such that the following will set preset 1 to be the words "preset test":

#p1preset test

This preset can then be accessed using a ".1", such that the following becomes "this is a preset test":

this is a .1

By default there are a maximum of 9 presets, where the last 5 have preset patterns:

5. half on and half off, then vice versa
6. the light bounces from the top left corner, like the DVD logo
7. a vertical line moving from the right to the left and looping
8. Tetris
9. a sine wave travelling to the right

You can change the oN and ofF timers in milliseconds by using:

#n1000
#f100

Be sure to add a space at the end if you want there to be a break before looping. Sometimes this won't be needed, especially if doing a pattern rather than a word.

To enable Spotify integration you need to enter you client secret and username in the control.py script (at the top). Then run the following command in the script, which will make you enter a Spotify authorising link into your browser, and will require you paste in the resulting url back into the running script.

#spot

Using the following command will begin to continuously spell out the name of the currently playing song on Spotify:

#name