Everything Working

Sticking with my original design of the tree sculpture, I cleaned up the branches and wrapped the remainder of the fiber optics. I also decided to add a few touches of color to the tree using crepe streamers for flowers.

I had difficulty modifying my code to accommodate multiple leds, as was advised by my peers to try out, especially when creating a rainbow effect with each led independent of the others. In the end, I ended up buying the PL9823 RGB LEDs because of their ability to chain together, which simplifies the circuit immensely and allows me to control each led’s color independently. The following video is my finalized code for the rainbow led effect, which uses the adafruit neopixel library.

With everything working the way I want it to, the last things for me to do is to finalize the details. I have decided to drape black cloth at the base of the tree to cover the bottom and the connected Arduino, while also masking the leds from viewer’s eyes. I am in the process of finding a large enough rock to hold the tree up with; however, the metal wires are rather heavy and I am not sure if the tree will be able to stand on its own without leaning on something.

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