first bit of hardware received

Cool Neon toys.

About three weeks back, I got my first bit of goodness related to the LightWalker project -- some killer RGB LED lights, an arduino compatible board, and a developer's shield from Cool Neon  (AKA Funhouse Productions) out of Oakland. I have done a lot of software in my day, but pretty much have zero experience with hardware. I've done a little bit of el-wire soldering along with soldering it onto fabric, but the last time I hooked up an LED to anything and made it turn on and off was roughly 1998. And that was only done like three times to pass my assembly language class.

It took about 30 minutes of mucking around on the interwebs before I had the arduino IDE up and running and made the lights dance. I was hooked! Well, after I made it so I could edit my sketches in Vim instead of the standard editor.

playa coat froggy.

The worst part of getting this stuff and starting to use and understand it was that I soon realized I needed a lot more electronic gear. And sensors! And wires and breadboards and yeah. The local electronics shop failed at all of this; however, radio shack actually saved the day. The local radio shack actually has a lot of cool arduino related stuff and some decent starter kits. Even though some of it looks suspiciously like re-branded versions of stuff from Seeed Studio.

[The only other "electronic" stuff I've done in the last 10+ years is this tree frog climbing up the back of my playa coat. Coincidentally, also done with hardware from cool neon. Where's a rad place to get stuff to make cool things?]

Long story short, within a week I had an ADXL-345 triple axis accelerometer breakout board hooked up to the whole thing and could fairly accurately detect when a step was taken by measuring the g-force applied to the accelerometer against a moving average baseline. Point being, when I walk, pretty lights sparkle every time I take a step. I also realized that having an accelerometer on each limb introduces a lot of potential for some fun light shows. I'll leave you with this example of it's goodness...