Make a beautiful hanging mobile with lights for your nursery. This mobile is so cute and so much fun that older kids and adults will definitely enjoy it as well. 

The included sample code has around 8 different animated color modes that you can control via bluetooth using Adafruit's free BlueFruit app. It also has a sound reactive mode, where the lights will pulse in time to music or voices in the room. 

This is a fairly easy build that requires just a little bit of tight soldering on the LED strip. The sunflowers are made from craft foam and felt that you can cut by hand or with a vinyl cutting machine. This project uses just a half-meter of very high density NeoPixels, making for gorgeously buttery smooth animations.

Plus, you'll put a Circuit Playground Bluefruit into the hands of the younger generation and start inspiring them to love animated lights from a very young age. That's always a win, in my book.

Parts

This project uses a Circuit Playground Bluefruit microcontroller and 1/2 meter of super high density NeoPixels. The pixel strip has 332 pixels per meter (166 pixels in a half meter), which is enough pixels for five "active" sunflowers. 

shot of a Black woman's neon-green manicured hand holding up a Circuit Playground Bluefruit glowing rainbow LEDs.
Circuit Playground Bluefruit is our third board in the Circuit Playground series, another step towards a perfect introduction to electronics and programming. We've...
$24.95
In Stock
Adafruit NeoPixel 332 LED-per-Meter Silicone Bead LED Strip,  lit up rainbow
Plug in and glow with this incredible, ultra high density NeoPixel strip with an astonishing 332 LEDs/meter. That's no typo, this half meter strip has 165 miniature NeoPixels...
$37.50
In Stock

I also added two strands of warm white fairy lights, to add visual interest. These can be turned on and off in the code in case you want to add variety to your modes.

Coil of thin flexible wire with lit up embedded LED 'fairy' lights attached to battery holder
Add sparkle to your project with these lovely silver wire LED strands. These strands are very interesting, they use two silver wires that are coated so they don't short if they...
$4.95
In Stock

To keep the wiring neat and tidy, I used 30awg wire ribbon cable to run wires from the flowers to the Circuit Playground.

3 x Wire Ribbon Cable
Silicone Cover Stranded-Core Ribbon Cable - 4 Wires 1 Meter Long - 30 AWG Black

You can power with a battery if you want the mobile to spin, or with a USB cable and power plug if you want it to last all year.

1 x Power Supply
5V 2A Switching Power Supply w/ USB-A Connector
1 x Battery
Lithium Ion Polymer Battery - 3.7v 1200mAh

You'll Also Need

  • Yellow craft foam
  • Green craft felt
  • Black vinyl for the flower faces (or draw them on with a sharpie)
  • Green pipe cleaners
  • A baby mobile kit or a small wooden hoop and some string
  • Silk leaves or flowers for decoration

This guide was first published on Apr 28, 2021. It was last updated on Mar 27, 2024.

This page (Overview) was last updated on Mar 08, 2024.

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