Your NeoPixie dust bag must twinkle beautifully -- what better way to do that than set the LEDs to a solid color and then randomly sparkle some of them white? You'll also want to be able to change the colors by tapping the capacitive touch sensor.
You can program all of these effects without typing a line of code, simply by dragging and dropping elemental code blocks, you can create Circuit Playground Express software in no time, and even test it out with the virtual Circuit Playground Express simulator built into the page.
Be sure you've gone through the tutorial here on the basics of MakeCode for Circuit Playground Express to make sure you know the basics of creating and uploading your code.
Setup
You'll begin with a nice clean canvas -- nothing but a single, empty forever loop block. This is where all of the repeating command blocks will live, running over and over and over again.
Let's also add an on start block to set one parameter from the beginning -- this is a good place for any commands that need to run once each time the Circuit Playground Express is turned on or reset. Think of it as a sort of initialization block.
From the Light category, add a set brightness block to the on start block and set the value to something moderately bright, say 80.
From the Light category, grab a photon pen up block and place it into the forever loop. Then, change the dropdown to pen down.
You'll want to light up and color your NeoPixels by moving the photon pen around while the pen is down, so add a photon forward by 1 block to the forever loop.
To create the organic, irregular sparkle pattern, you'll have the photon pen move a random number of positions (between 0-4), by adding a pick random 0 to 4 block to the photon forward by block.
You'll do the same sort of trick to vary the brightness, using the set brightness block and another pick random block, with the value range set from 0 to 40
To slow things down just a touch, add in a slight pause with the pause (ms) block.
Here's what the animation now looks like -- go ahead and test it out!
Color Touch
By default the LEDs will light up red. Red is nice, but how about some other colors, too, when the mood strikes? You'll now add touch input that allows one of the capacitive touch pads of the Circuit Playground Express to switch the color values every time you tap it.
From the Input category, add an on buttonA click block.
Change the input to one of the pin pads, in this case pin A5. (Any of the seven pin A pads will work as capacitive touch pads.)
Change the input mode to down instead of click. This means the input condition is met the moment you touch the pad, not when you touch and release.
Add a set all pixels to red block from the light category to the on pin A5 down block.
To make the ring flash white when the pad is touched, change the dropdown from red to white.
Variable Color
To change the color of the photon in the forever block, we'll use a variable. This variable, called "pixieColor", will store a value that changes each time you touch the capacitive pad, and the value will be used by the photon set color block.
In the Variables category, click the Make a Variable button, then type the name pixieColor and click Ok.
Drage the change item by 1 block into the on pin A5 down block, then change the dropdown to your pixieColor variable. So that the color change is more dramatic, set the change value to 50.
Add a photon set pen hue block to the forever loop, just under the photon pen down block.
Instead of the default 0 value, drag an instance of the pixieColor variable block on to the photon set pen hue.
Simulate It
Test out the color change now by clicking the gold pad on the Circuit Playground Express simulator at pad A5. You'll see the color change each time you click it.
Pseudo ON/OFF
You may not always want your NeoPixie Dust Bag to sparkle, but it isn't convenient to unplug the battery all the time, so let's use the on-board slide switch to turn off the LEDs.
Grab an on switch moved left block from the Input category, then duplicate it and set the second one's dropdown to right.
Like you did before, create a new variable, this time naming it "ON/OFF".
Drag a set item to 0 block into each switch block, and then change their variable dropdown choices to ON/OFF. The left position will be ON, so set the value to 1, leaving the right position to 0.
Conditional If/Then/Else
So you now have a variable named ON/OFF that changes depending on the slide switch position. But how do you actually use that to control the lights? The answer is with a conditional if then else block.
This block does two things: it tests if a certain condition is met, and then it executes the proper set of blocks depending on that answer.
In our case: if the variable ON/OFF is equal to 1, then play our animation blocks, else, set all the pixels to black.
From the Logic category, get an if then else block and place it in the forever loop. Then place all of the animation blocks inside the then section.
To test our condition, we'll need to get a 0 = 0 block from the Logic category and place that at the end of the if statement.
Place an ON/OFF variable into the first slot, and change the second slot to 1. This means now that when the slide switch is to the left, the variable will be equal to 1 and the animation will play.
Now, put a set all pixels to block inside the else section, and change the dropdown to black.
You finished programming your NeoPixie Dust Bag! Upload it to the Circuit Playground Express and then we'll move on to dressing it up with a battery, bag, and capacitive switch.
