Lessons learned about "pixel rings " - I am working on producing a couple of KH-383 Funko Pop st...

[G+_Bob Shields]

Lessons learned about "pixel rings" - I am working on producing a couple of KH-383 Funko Pop stands and have found out the hard way that not all rings of 16 5050 LEDs are the same. I bought a couple of additional rings from a different source than my original one, and found the new ones a) have a slightly larger inner diameter so they don't fit tightly on the support I 3D printed, b) are slightly brighter, and c) are wired in the opposite order (counter-clockwise) of my previous group (clockwise).

 

This last item could be a deal-breaker for some (not in my case), or it could be an "auto-mirror feature" for, say, a goggles application.

 

Another item on the stands: the 3-wire + pull-down resistor approach for the 2 switches is a bit more complicated than necessary. I used only 2 wires (GND and data pins) and initialized the code with "pinMode(buttonX, INPUT_PULLUP);" and tested for the pins being LOW instead of HIGH to indicate a button press. This takes advantage of the Arduino's built-in programmable pull-up resistors to skip some difficult (for me) soldering...