I Created an Arc Reactor! And my wife took it! #CircuitPython #Gemma #GemmaM0 #adafruit @__wtfox__
I started this project last October. In my spare time, I help organize a Python meetup in Orange County and we didn’t have a speaker lined up for the month. Being that it was the Halloween season, I offered to build something fit for a costume. Luckily, I had an LED ring and a CircuitPython board (an Adafruit Gemma M0) laying around, so I thought an Arc Reactor would be just perfect.
An Arc Reactors is a fictional power source in Marvel’s Comic Universe, famously used by Iron Man to keep him alive. It’s essentially a circular device that glows blue with a dim flickering light. The flicker is the key to making it seem like there’s actual nuclear power flowing through the arc reactor. You can read more about that here, if you’d like: Marvel Fandom: Arc Reactor.
Fast forward to present day:
My wife decides she needs it, but she’d also like a big, red button wired up to it and when the button is pressed, it changes the color from blue to pink (temporarily). This, she explained to me, would be a sort of doorbell for her cubicle at work. She often works with headphones on and is usually startled when co-workers “sneak up” behind her.
Easy come, easy go. See more on Anthony’s blog, the code on GitHub, and the video below. Great project!
