Tools and materials

You will need the following materials:

  • Kit of parts from my Tindie store. Make sure to choose the variant matching the order of signals on your LED strip (see details in the next section)

  • APA102 (DotStar) LED strip, 144 LED/meter, black PCB, for example this one from Amazon. You need 4 strips of 50cm (72 LEDs); you can also buy longer strips and cut them into 50cm pieces. The strips should not be waterproofed. Adafruit strips come with waterproof sheathing which you can just remove and discard.

  • Two 18650 Li-Ion batteries. Look for high-capacity (at least 3000mAh), unprotected batteries from a reputable manufacturer such as Panasonic, Samsung, or Sanyo. Do not try to save money by buying no-name battery on eBay or Amazon; instead, use a specialized store such as 18650batterystore.com.

  • Polycarbonate tube, 11F(55in/141cm), 1 inch outer diameter, from flowtoys.com. Note: while the tube is listed as 55”, the actual length is 54.5”.

  • 1/2 inch (or 12 mm) square wood dowel, from HomeDepot <https://www.homedepot.com/p/Waddell-1-2-in-x-36-in-American-Basswood-Square-Dowel-8308U/100547367>`__ or any other hardware store. You need two pieces, each at least 51 cm (slightly over 20”).

  • 3d-printed spacers. You can order them with the kit of parts as an option or you can use your own 3d printer. The 3d models (in STEP and STL formats) are in hardware/3d_printed folder in github repository. You will need 2 copies of spacer.stl and one copy each of controller cap, midspacer, switch_protector and switch_spacer. I suggest printing at 0.2mm resolution for speed.

  • Adafruit ItsyBitsy M4 microcontroller. Advanced users can also try using ItsyBitsy nRF52840; it is slightly more expensive, but it comes with Bluetooth, which opens many additional possibilities. However, current version of code doesn’t use Bluetooth - this is planned for future upgrades. You will need to compile firmware from source if you plan on using nRF52840.

    Do not use 32u4 or M0 ItsyBitsy - they do not have enough RAM for our purposes.

Tools

You will need the usual tools and supplies:

  • wire strippers

  • pliers

  • flush cutters

  • scissors

  • decent soldering iron, solder, and flux

  • electric tape

  • heat gun (for shrinking the shrink wrap)

  • sharp model knife or utility knife.

You will also need a computer to program the microcontroller and a USB charger (with microUSB cable) to charge the batteries.

In addition, you will need black spray paint for painting the wood dowels and epoxy glue.