NeoPixels, a type of LED strip with individually addressable pixels, are a firm preferred among creators of elaborate light effects. They are prominent for their flexibility as well as the simplicity with which you can daisy-chain them. Although the protocol to drive these bit LEDs can be rather challenging to execute because of tight signal timing constraints.
However, [Adrian Studer] shown that driving WS2812-based LED strips like the NeoPixel series doesn’t necessarily need hand-optimized assembly code. In fact, it doesn’t need any type of code at all. He developed the NeoPixel Punk Console, a gadget that produces a light show without even utilizing a microcontroller. just a handful of 555 timers as well as some 74HC series logic work together to create pulses with roughly appropriate timings.
Operating the gadget is as simple as tweaking a few potentiometers, just like its namesake the Atari Punk Console. It’s rather a random process though, as well as it may be impossible to re-create a pattern that you liked. Also, the LEDs mainly illuminate in main colors at full power, though [Adrian] plans to make an improved version that drives the red, green, as well as blue subpixels separately. however the truth that all of this is implemented by just a lot of 555 timers makes it a rather outstanding hack by any type of standard.
We’ve seen much more than a few methods of driving NeoPixels or similar WS2812-based LED strips, though all of them utilize a microprocessor of some sort; you can terminate up a traditional 6502, utilize SPI as well as DMA on a PIC32, or just plug in a single ARM Cortex M0+.