Streaks of colorful light, suspended in midair — ever since people began to capture images on film we have had a fascination with light painting and light drawing. By simply moving a light source in front of an open shutter, motion over time could be captured on camera.
We have a rich history of light painting projects here at Adafruit, as well. Check out some of these excellent projects for incredible effects that involve persistence of vision images painted with light, and even thermal heat map painting.
A Circuit Playground and a camera or smartphone capable of taking long exposure photos is enough to get started. By using the on-board accelerometer, you’ll be able to change colors by rotating the Circuit Playground. As an added touch, you can use a potentiometer to easily adjust the brightness of the NeoPixels.
Before you get started, make sure you’ve been through the basic tutorials on using the Circuit Playground. You’ll need to have installed the Arduino IDE, added the Circuit Playground board to Arduino, and added the Circuit Playground library. This excellent guide, Introducing Circuit Playground and Circuit Playground lesson #0 will show you how to do all of that and get you going in no time!
This August we’d like to see all of your Circuit Playground projects! Whether you’re just starting out or a seasoned pro, regardless of how recently you completed a project with Circuit Playground, share it on Facebook, G+, Instagram, Pinterest or Twitter with #AdafruitExtraCredit #CircuitPlayground and submit it at Adafruit.com/extracredit for a chance to have your project featured on the Adafruit Blog and maybe even a surprise Adafruit treat!
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.