NeoPixel timer with Arduino - super easy and fun!

🤩 FREE Arduino Crash Course 👇👇

***Want to learn more? Check out our courses!***

***Get your Free Trial of Altium PCB design Software***

***Get the code, transcript, challenges, etc for this lesson on our website***

***We designed this circuit board for beginners!***

FOLLOW US ELSEWHERE
---------------------------------------------------
________________________________
I don't know about you, but I really enjoy playing board games with friends. I like talking, eating good snacks, and just having some friendly competition. But it seems like every time I play a board game with a group of friends, there's always that one person who takes forever on their turn. Everybody's like, dude, the world's not gonna blow up if you take your turn too fast. But it's like they're just staring at the board and thinking and thinking, and I don't have anything against thinking, but think on other people's turn, then take your turn. And I feel like every group of friends has that person. It's like the deep thinker who just takes really long turns. Maybe that's you. Maybe that's all of us sometimes. Anyway, in the group of guys I play board games with, this guy's name is Ted. And one of my other friends was like, "Mike, let's make a turn timer for Ted "so the board game doesn't take like three hours to play." So that was like two years ago, and I finally got around to building a turn timer. I am calling this the Ted Turn Timer because it was inspired by Ted. It's super simple. Really, it's just like any old timer. And if you like playing games with friends, then I have a feeling, you know somebody just like Ted. In this video, I'm gonna walk through how to build a turn timer just like this. I'll go over the design, the parts I got, the 3D printed model, all that stuff will be in the comments. Really, you can put this together pretty quick. And I have a feeling, if you like playing games with friends, then you probably know somebody like Ted so this thing could be really helpful for you. Stay tuned. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to get more videos like this. All right, so what I wanna build is, like, just a simple timer with a button. I don't want it to be like super intrusive so I don't to make any noises and stuff like that. I just wanted to have some LEDs that change color through a spectrum of color. So, like, over the course of a turn, right? And you, you'd be able to set the length of each turn with the timer, right? So I'm thinking there's gonna be a single button on this timer, and then, like, you can set the time so it will have like a set time mode, and then once you've set the time, then it goes into play mode, and then let's say you set the turn for one minute, basically the LEDs in the turn timer will change from, like, I don't know, I'm thinking green, go through a, a spectrum of colors, end up at red, and then when the turn is over, it starts, like, blinking red or something like that. That's kind of what I have in mind. So anytime I've got a project in mind like this, usually what I do is I try to run through just this quick prototyping process. It's somewhat formalized, but I don't necessarily hold myself to it super strictly, but this is what I like to do. So first what I do is I draw a picture of what it is I wanna build.

CONTINUED...

***About Us:***
This Arduino lesson was created by Programming Electronics Academy. We are an online education company who seeks to help people learn about electronics and programming through the ubiquitous Arduino development board.

***We have no affiliation whatsoever with Arduino LLC, other than we think they are cool.***

[enriqueeenriquez]

The electronic design is stylish, and appealing. The whole concept behind the setup mode is clever and robust. Well done!!!!

[aircates]

Mike, if your friends are like mine, you’re going to need a little more incentive than just a blinking light to motivate them. Might I suggest a taser tethered to them so when it flashes red, the appropriate “motivation” to roll is applied…. ⚡️

[ChadKapper]

You always have great ideas Mike! I look forward to working with you more. Also... I would love to see a video of you walking through the code!

[gusgyovi]

Great channel, have a Question, Do you have a step by step comprehensive tutorial on how to write an independent pretty complete code for a multiple effects using one pin, specific for the IC chipped 3 pins RGB LED strips or the Pixels RGBs those contain in some cases more then 500 LEDs per strip or the pixels RGB LEDs like the WS2812 or WS2811, include setting up an IR remote control with multiple options like, changing effect buttons, random compound effects button, controlling brightness levels, schedule and timer, also sound reactive option with few effects all from the remote, without using FastLed’s or Adafruite libraries, As LEDs effects and how they work are the most interesting in learning arduino. And most of the tutorials on youtube are about how to blink an led and using libraries so not much of how to program Christmas lights for example, thanks

[cometmace]

Nice to see the entire make process. I was given an Adafruit MacroPad as a gift. When I was looking for a project for it, I did a multi-clock, CHESS clock. Each player has their own countdown timer that's set to the total time for them to make *all* their moves. At the start of play, dial in the number of players, the total time each player is allotted, and which player goes first. Each player has a color coded LED pushbutton. When they've made a move, they press their button. That pauses their countdown timer and starts the countdown timer of the next player. A text display shows the player how much time of their total time has expired.

[felixcosty]

Thanks for the video.
Was just wondering if you are going to do a video on the joystick library.

[DGJB]

Thank you for sharing your game timer project with us. I think it would be great to go through the code.

[FlexDRG]

Interesting. Is there a method to restart the timer while it hasn't timed out yet? Maybe a (super)long press to put it in standby for when you pause the game? But when you don't want to turn it off and need to reprogram it to use it again?

[darkphotons]

Great little project, however you may want to check your uController VCC connection on your Fritzing diagram 8:46.

[matthewhayden]

I am working on a game for my family and need a turn timer just like this but for 3 (probably) seconds . My initial thought was numbers that count down but led lights that represents seconds make a lot of sense. Is there a way to purchase something like this from you? Thanks!

[castlecodersltd]

Another great video. Thanks, it's given me an idea

[Frontrangeman]

I would appreciate a review of the code for this project.
I envision a timer modification for a speaker with a 20 minute presentation window.
Thank you for the idea.

[terminator]

Where can find this project drawing paper ?

[bentownsend]

The code the code. that would be great to help us beginners along.

[promcfire]

Please, explain the code. That will be very interesting 🤔

[IceCreams]

Seems the power switch is working backwards :-)

[phakalanep]

No code ***Get the code, transcript, challenges, etc for this lesson on our website*** - there is no link to download code