Several software components are required to make the system work. Although we’ll be building and testing one subsection at a time, let’s get all of the software downloads out of the way now.

If running an older version of the Arduino IDE software (prior to 1.0.4, or anything in the 0023 or earlier series), this would be a good time to upgrade. If you don’t know what an “Arduino IDE” is, this project may be too much to tackle right now, consider starting with the Learn Arduino tutorials. (Come back in a few months once you've flexed your 'duino-muscles!)

Two libraries are required. First is the Adafruit NeoPixel library, if you don’t already have it installed from prior projects:

The SdFat library is for reading and writing SD cards. The Arduino IDE already includes a library for SD cards (built atop an earlier version of SdFat), but this latest release provides much better performance and some extra features that we need:

And finally, the Arduino sketch that does the light painting:

Installing Arduino libraries is a frequent stumbling block. If this is your first time, or simply needing a refresher, please read the All About Arduino Libraries tutorial.

The sketch and both libraries will need to be uncompressed, renamed and relocated, and the Arduino IDE restarted so the new pieces register. However…

One must resist the temptation to get into the light-painting code right away. It is vitally important that we first test each piece of the system in isolation, as there are multiple potential points of failure and diagnosing a fully-assembled rig is a massive headache (don't ask us how we know! ;-)