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Robert Mawrey
Published © MIT

Build Your Own Sparkling CheerLights LED Display

CheerLights that are controlled by tweets and that change color in synchronization with all the other CheerLights around the world.

IntermediateFull instructions provided12 hours1,972
Build Your Own Sparkling CheerLights LED Display

Things used in this project

Hardware components

Photon
Particle Photon
The Particle Photon is a Wi-Fi microcontroller made by Particle.io. You will use the Photon to connect to your Wi-Fi network, read the latest CheerLights color from ThingSpeak, and drive the LED strips.
×1
Particle - Shield Shield
The Particle Shield Shield is used to convert the 3V signals from the Photon to 5V signals to drive the LED strips
×1
Adafruit NeoPixel Digital RGB LED Strip - Black 30 LED - BLACK
My project used four 10 meter LED strips. The LED strips come in a maximum of 5 meter lengths and each of the four “branches” was made from two 5 meter strips in series. This is a lot of LED strips and your project can be adjusted to a small number if needed.
×40
22 - 10 AWG 10-Circuit Terminal Block
A terminal block is used to provide a secure physical and electrical connection between the shield shield and the LED strips.
×1
Adafruit 5V 10A switching power supply
5 meter LED strips can draw up to 5A each with all the LEDs white and on full brightness. Since the sparkling LEDs are never all on at full brightness at the same time 2.5 A is enough current for each 5 meter strip.
×1
• Large Green Weatherproof Indoor Outdoor Electrical Cord Connection Enclosure Box Sockit Box
A weather proof box used to mount the electronics outdoors.
×1
Adafruit Female DC Power adapter - 2.1mm jack to screw terminal block
Used to connect the power supplies to the electronics
×2
Adafruit 4700uF 10v Electrolytic Capacitor
Used for transient voltage suppression (see Adafruit’s The Magic of NeoPixels for more details)
×2
Resistor 100 ohm
Resistor 100 ohm
Used for transient voltage suppression. Plus: Miscellaneous parts – Ethernet cable, 14 AWG wire, solder, terminals, screws, heatshrink, plywood for base.
×4

Software apps and online services

Particle IDE

Story

Read more

Schematics

CheerLights Schematic

Schematic Diagram

Code

Particle Photon Source Code

Cut and paste into the Particle.io IDE.

Credits

Robert Mawrey

Robert Mawrey

2 projects • 31 followers
Founder and CEO of Sentient Things, Inc. Former CEO of IoT startup ioBridge.com, the creators of ThingSpeak.com.

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