NeoPixel Scrolling Text Cufflinks

Valentine’s Day is coming up, meaning you just may do something fancier than your typical day-to-day activities. For such an event, you could show up with standard cufflinks – which make little to no impression – or you could instead make these NeoPixel novelty cufflinks that can display small images or scrolling text.

This device, or pair of devices, was created by Adafruit designer Erin St. Blaine. Each uses a minuscule Adafruit QT Py RP2040 breakout board for control, along with a commensurately tiny 5x5 NeoPixel “BFF” grid board for display. This combo forms the heart of the outer cufflink section, and is attached to a switched JST breakout that forms the back of the link. This in turn connects up to a LiPo battery, allowing the link to shine in all its glory.

One clever trick here is that the positive and ground wires are used to attach the two cuff link sections together. These are soldered to the QT Py, and emanate from the QT Py/NeoPixel board-sandwich via a pair of holes left in the headers between the two. From there they are twisted and wrapped around the JST breakout, making what appears to be a rather secure link between the two parts.

To finish the links, St. Blaine used a metal bezel and filled the middle with translucent UV resin. The resin adds a nice diffusion effect, while still allowing one to see NeoPixel images or scrolling letters. As shown in the video below, the links are programmed in CircuitPython and look like a lot of fun!