This is a simple 'ooh, pretty colors' project targeting the cheap-and-cheerful STM32F103C8 chip. It also supports GD32VF103CB chips, which are new RISC-V microcontrollers used in boards such as Seeed Studio's "Longan Nano". Select your target hardware by un-commenting one of the lines at the top of the Makefile
which defines the MCU
variable.
In a nutshell, the application drives a string of WS2812B
'NeoPixel' LEDs from the SPI1
peripheral connected to pin B5
.
Nothing special there, but the application expects the LEDs to be split into groups and sandwiched between acrylic shapes, with those shapes connecting to one another in a string. So it generates cycling patterns of lighting effects, given the number of stars and the number of LEDs in each star.
'Tis the season! :)
It's late December as I write this, so I'm not going to accomplish any of this until the next holiday season. But:
-
Add buttons to change patterns.
-
Do a better job of packing the colors for SPI transmission, to reduce RAM usage.
-
Add support for STM32G031Jx chips - this is a great use case for a tiny 8-pin ARM chip!