Output Devices

This week was a great opportunity to continue my progress toward the final project. My adapted SAMD21E17A board was equipped to support LED ouput, but instead of a singular LED I opted to connect a strand of Neopixels. I already had a dedicated data pin and ground pad (though because of a thin ground trace I eventually also decided to make all the outer space ground as a precaution). The only difference for the Neopixels was that I needed to connect to 5V, so I added a jumper directly to the regulator which could serve that purpose. Not the most elegant solution, but definitely functional for these tests.

At first I had some issues assigning the right board in Arduino, and used a BlinkyTape library for the test which was incompatible. However, with Chris Zhu's help (our phenomenal honorary TA who always takes time to help his classmates even while doing his own work for this class) I was able to test a single LED and do a colorful strand test. I'm excited to also try other output devices as time allows, but for now am pleased to have this functional strand that I can start playing with for the final project.