Arduino or hardwire?

[HappySalesman]

Hey all (I hope this is in the right section)

Anyway, I was planning on doing some lighting work on my Daedric armor, but I wanted to add some special effects with it. Mostly just fading in and out of the LEDS that will be placed on various spots on the armor.

on top of that, I had plans to make an orb I could carry in my fist, and insert some LEDs in it to simulate me holding a magical spell like from the game. I wanted it to do the same fade in and out while idle, but I wanted to be able to make it look like I actually can 'fire' it. So press a switch, it gets bright, then flashes when it 'fires' before resuming the idle fade.

I figured Arduino would be the easiest way, but I know nothing of Arduino (I just know 12v DC systems lol). Can anyone point me to a good tutorial or perhaps someone has done this same thing (maybe in an iron man cosplay?) and has a write up?

I tried searching but didn't find much D:

 

[chris_s]

Arduinos are great if you familiar with coding. I wanted to do the same thing for a magic chest of jewels for my kids. It took learning C and some time looking at tutorials and eventually writing my own code. And because it's code everyone had their own way of writing it. I'll try and post some of the sites i used when i get home tonight.

 

[nomuse]

Hrm. There are LEDs with blinker circuits already inside. Don't know of any with fader circuits built in. There's a pricier option that is easier to learn than the full Arduino system; a little thing called the BlinkM which is programmed from a sort of drum-machine like software sequencer.

There's some pretty good Instructables at Instructables on making the classic "Macintosh Power Button" pulse with an Arduino compatible. They generally provide working code, but you would be working with a naked AVR, which is slightly more technical.

Good question to think about.

 

[HappySalesman]

So for programming Arduino, do I use C or C++?

 

[VariablePenguin]

Arduino has its own coding language. Here's a link to their tutorial on fade https://www.arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/Fade . I actually juse used it in my Rocketeer build to simulate engine glow.