In addition to toggling pins on Circuit Playground you can also control the color of its NeoPixel LEDs wirelessly from a phone or tablet. The Bluefruit LE Connect iOS and Android apps have a special color picker mode which makes it easy to change pixel colors.
To use this NeoPixel control sketch make sure you've followed all the steps in this guide and have a Circuit Playground wired up to a Bluefruit LE module. In addition make sure you have the Circuit Playground and Adafruit Bluefruit LE nRF51 Arduino libraries installed as previously mentioned.
Next open the Arduino IDE and pick the cplay_neopixel_picker example from the Adafruit Bluefruit LE nRF51 library.
You shouldn't need to modify anything in the sketch, however there are some #define values near the top that can adjust the behavior like the intensity of the NeoPixel brightness. Also if you changed the mode pin from 12 to something else you will need to modify the BLUEFRUIT_UART_MODE_PIN define in the BluefruitConfig.h tab.
Upload the sketch to Circuit Playground and you should be ready to start controlling the NeoPixels with either the Bluefruit LE Connect iOS app or Bluefruit LE Connect Android app. If you haven't used the Bluefruit LE Connect app before be sure to skim the guide on its usage (although the guide is for iOS that application is very similar on Android).
On your iOS or Android device open the Bluefruit LE application. You should see a device called "CPlay_BLE" (sometimes in rare cases when the serial connection has too much noise you might see it called "Adafruit Bluefruit LE"). |
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Click the device, then click the Controller mode (not the NeoPixel mode, that's a more advanced NeoPixel control system that isn't supported by this sketch). |
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Click the Color Picker at the bottom to enter the basic NeoPixel color picker control. |
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Choose a color, then click Send to send it over Bluetooth Low Energy to Circuit Playground. You should see the NeoPixels on the board light up the chosen color! |
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Finally go back to the Controller mode and select Control Pad at the bottom. Press the left arrow or right arrow to change which pixels are lit up. |
That's all there is to controlling Circuit Playground's NeoPixels with a Bluefruit LE module & Bluetooth Low Energy!
Page last edited July 21, 2016
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