I’m going to show you how to build this simple, programmable RGB LED strip controller using an Arduino Uno (or Nano), an Adafruit Trellis, and a handful of other parts.
The Adafruit Trellis is one of my favorite new toys from Lady Ada and crew. First of all, it’s a mere $9.95 for the board, and another $4.95 for the silicone elastomer button pad (prices as of this writing). That’s a great deal for a 16-button 4×4 matrix with LED capability. It doesn’t come with any LEDs mounted, you need to supply them, but that gives you the flexibility to choose the colors you want (and keeps cost and complexity down vs building in addressable LEDs). To build this project like mine, you’ll need a handful of 3mm LEDs. I used 2 red, 2 green, 2 blue, 4 yellow, and 6 white.
The Trellis uses I2C to communicate, so it requires only two I/O pins (data and clock) to control 16 buttons and 16 LEDs.
You can do the hardware part of this project on a small proto board, which is how I did my prototype. I quickly realized that I needed something neater and more contained on their desks (a bare Arduino and proto board banging around would be too fragile), so I made my own shield to drive the LED strips. Instructions and files for building the shield are included in the last step.
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.