Painting with Light

Streaks of colorful light, suspended in midair -- ever since people began to capture images on film we have had a fascination with light painting and light drawing. By simply moving a light source in front of an open shutter, motion over time could be captured on camera.

We have a rich history of light painting projects here at Adafruit, as well. Check out some of these excellent projects for incredible effects that involve persistence of vision images painted with light, and even thermal heat map painting.

A Circuit Playground and a camera or smartphone capable of taking long exposure photos is enough to get started. By using the on-board accelerometer, you'll be able to change colors by rotating the Circuit Playground. As an added touch, you can use a potentiometer to easily adjust the brightness of the NeoPixels.

This guide was first published on Nov 09, 2016. It was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Nov 09, 2016.

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