Playa Bike Build Tutorial – Light Up your Ride

The third installment of this learn guide from Erin St. Blaine is live, just in time for those late summer festivals. Add lights to your bicycle for visibility and style with NeoPixels:

I want to add lights to the frame that will animate in the same colors I painted the bike. I’m using NeoPixel strand lights at 2″ pitch, for a couple of reasons:

1. They are already 100% waterproof — each light is encased in plastic, and these lights are very hard to break
2. The strand-light style will allow me to wrap them around the bike frame, decorating it like a Christmas tree. I can get lights on all sides of the bike really easily.
3. The spread between the pixels means I can cover the whole bike using fewer lights than if I were to use a NeoPixel strip. This means my batteries will last a lot longer, since I’m driving fewer pixels. My hope is that this strip will last through several nights of use without having to change the batteries.

Learn all about how she did it at https://learn.adafruit.com/playa-festival-bike/frame-lights