Can you imagine building any device without an LED? A device that does not have a monitor or display. It is almost inconceivable.
Back in my career, I remember stories about one of the network router companies releasing a full lights-out router. Data centres don’t need LEDs as all the configuration is done remotely. The story goes that it did not sell well. Engineers like to know that a device is working and use the crude diagnostics you get from blinking LEDs.
Within my own projects using the Raspberry PI Pico or sometimes ESP32, I normally use the onboard LED as a pulse. Setting up a task to provide blinking of the LED. This gives me assurance that the device is powered and at least some of the code is running. Of course, different blinking patterns could also be used to give me diagnostics. Though I have often added an RGB LED if I want more diagnostics. Colours are easier to understand than blinking patterns.
More LEDs mean more fun. So grab some WS2812B LEDs strips or rings. I’ve been playing recently with an LED ring. It is amazing the satisfaction you get from simple animations like LED chasing around the ring in different colours. I used even more LEDs in a Sabre Wall Light, animating 144 RGB leds. That started to get a little more technically difficult as I had to worry about the power and browning out my Pico.
I get immense satisfaction even from simple projects and then combining them into bigger projects. My courses on Udemy show how to get started with a C/C++ environment for the Raspberrry PI Pico and some micro projects using LEDs and other simple components.
If you are interested in Raspberry Pi, Pico, RP2040, ESP32 or IoT, then please do follow me on social media.
