Valentine's Day LED Heart

thingiverse

I searched for an LED lit heart as a Valentine's Day gift, but couldn't find exactly what I wanted. I wanted a subtle animation and a template which could be customized. I set out to make this based on Adafruit's NeoPixels and Adafruit's Trinket. http://youtu.be/lvECzZIMjFc Instructions 1) Print out all the pieces except for the stencil. You need to customize that before printing it. When you print it, use a low infill to let more light bleed through, or a higher infill to get a better contrast with your text. You will need 2x brackets. Be sure to print these on their side and you may want to set the infill higher on these for stability. You will need 12x led_clamp models. These (sort of) help secure the LEDs to the main heart. These could use some extra refinements and they are fragile. You will also need: 12 Adafruit NeoPixel LEDs (WS2812). These are the individual leds. 1 Adafruit Trinket 7 screws or nuts&bolts 2-4 2mm screws for the Trinket 24 gauge wire (I used old ATA cables). USB A to USB mini B. 2) Wire up the LEDs in the main heart. I chose to use two separate channels. 3) Screw or bolt the "back" to the brackets. 4) Screw or bolt the "back" and brackets assembly to the base. 5) Customize the stencil -- use text or whatever as a boolean and subtract that from the stencil. Be creative here! 6) Screw in the Trinket to the base -- you will need to drill pilot holes. 7) Finally, attach the stencil to the main heart and back with 3 screws. 8) Grab the code for the heart here: https://gist.github.com/apetrone/8997116 9) Upload that onto the Trinket and enjoy.