LED Stuff

• Nice pre-done project called PixelBlaze. A few things to learn there, but very similar to bike helmet project. Patterns are here: https://electromage.com/patterns/

For some reason, it can do it for 1 side, but not the other. When it fades down it's either skipping some or something, going back up it seems smooth…

FastLED only does RGB, not RGBW.

Yeah, this really needs a separate page.

The microcontroller in each LED takes 2mA on idle. Ouch.

• They recommend a power tap every 25 pixels for voltage drop

But NiMH cells have a lower internal resistance, and if that resistance is a major part of the resistance to limit the current into the LEDs (as it often is in cheap designs with coin cells, but less often in AA-based designs) you'll probably fry the LEDs quite quickly.

Nice tutorial on power saving stuff on Adafruit. https://learn.adafruit.com/sipping-power-with-neopixels/

• Example code: https://learn.adafruit.com/sipping-power-with-neopixels/demo-code
• Keep in mind arduino sets micros() and millis() with interrupts! >.< And the neopixel disables them for writing to led strip.