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Blog A QT Py Christmas
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Engagement
  • Author Author: ralphjy
  • Date Created: 4 Dec 2020 10:35 PM Date Created
  • Views 2114 views
  • Likes 7 likes
  • Comments 3 comments
  • oled
  • neopixel ring
  • holidayspecial20ch
  • adafruit qt py
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A QT Py Christmas

ralphjy
ralphjy
4 Dec 2020
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Holiday Special 20

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I was not going to do a Holiday project but there hasn't been a lot of joy and there has been a lot of stress this year, so I thought that it would be good to do something simple and colorful to lift our spirits.

 

I recently got an Adafruit QT Py and a NeoPixel LED ring that I thought I could use to make a simple lighted Christmas ornament.  I'm going to add a 128x64 OLED display and use the capacitive sensing built into the SAMD21 to select different color patterns for the NeoPixel ring.

 

Here's a sketch of the concept:

image

I'll also print a base to hold the QT Py.  I'm still in the proto stage so I'll use a breadboard initially.  I need to figure out what I'm going to use for the capacitive touch buttons.

 

Software

I planned to use CircuitPython to program the QT Py as Adafruit has some great python libraries available for display graphics and neopixels.  Unfortunately, I discovered that with the 32KB of SRAM on the SAMD21 that you can't load many complex libraries simultaneously.  I could run different functions individually (OLED, NeoPixel, CapSense), but when I tried to import all the libraries in the same program I ran into "out of memory" errors.  I made sure that I was using the smaller footprint "mpy" libraries and I tried different load order and even added garbage collection between imports.  I think the SSD1306(OLED) library is the worst offender because it also requires the bus_device and framebuf libraries.  I almost got it to work, but finally decided just to use the Arduino IDE.

 

Prototype Hardware

Here's my first pass.  Hopefully it will evolve over the next few weeks.  I still need to add the capacitive sense buttons and possibly a small speaker for sound.  And to clean up the wiring.

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Demo Video

A short video that shows the OLED and NeoPixel ring working.

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Top Comments

  • neilk
    neilk over 4 years ago +1
    Nice one, Ralph. So many pattern possibilities with the neopixel Neil
  • Andrew J
    Andrew J over 4 years ago in reply to neilk

    Great idea, Ralph, I think it's going to work really well.

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  • neilk
    neilk over 4 years ago

    Nice one, Ralph. So many pattern possibilities with the neopixel

     

    Neil

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  • genebren
    genebren over 4 years ago

    Very nice Ralph!  The prints turned out nicely and I like the combo of protoboard holder and display ring. Well done!

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