In my bid to pull out all the stops for the Colonel, I pulled out some NeoPixels to test instead of using the bicolour LEDs that I was originally thinking about using. Needless to say that when I opened the box of NeoPixels I was thrilled to see that I had previously been into it and had even strung together 3, but had never tested them out, so I installed the libraries and gave the tutorial test script a go… each LED lit up a different colour (White, Red, Blue) and it didn’t do anything else. At least the tutorial referenced a second tutorial with some troubleshooting steps listed in it, so I installed that one and gave it a try… and the LEDs started flashing and changing colours. Success!!

But not. It wasn’t until this morning when I went in to look at the code and figure out what it was doing, so I could think about customizing it, when I realized that it wasn’t actually doing what it was… so I started experimenting with the different variables presented in the tutorial to see if any of them would work, and in the end the one that resolved things was a complete surprise as it seems I’m working with some premium RGBW pixels (as opposed to the standard RGBs)

Once I updated the set up, the difference was immediately noticeable… all of a sudden there was a flow to things and the colour combinations I was seeing were making a lot more sense. NOW I can start thinking about what data I’m going to use them to display, and what colours I’m going to use in order to do it.

Maybe something like having each sensor assigned its own colour, and then have the Arduino compare the sensor data to the desired range for each value, and display where in the range the sensor is. Example, if our desired range is 20-30, a reading of 23 would light up 2 Pixels as each pixel represents up to 20% of the target range, and 23 is 3 points into (or 30% of) the target range.

When outside of desired, it flashes, otherwise pixels act as bar graph - Full bar if over 100. If below the target range the first cell would be the appropriate colour, however the following 4 would be white in order to differentiate the 2 types of flashing bar.

I’m really liking this idea. I’m going to have to make a note of it, so I use it once I start including crop details in the programming.