[evanperryg]

We're setting one up for IRI. It controls a (hand-made) strip of LEDs mounted along our shooter. It does patterns inspired by the lights on 111's and 118's bots. As far as I can tell, this is the most common use for the Arduino in FRC- lights.

There are a wide variety of ways to add custom lights to the bot using arduino. We're just directly connecting each LED to a DIO on the arduino. This is the simplest way(code-wise) to do it, but not the most effective, especially with an UNO or similar. If you want to do this, the best way to go would be to get a Mega2560, MegaADK, or a Due, as they have many more digital/PWM outputs available. However, if you are new to the world of Arduino, other options like multiplexers and I2C can be pretty intimidating.

If you see a team with a lot of lights doing patterns, or multi-colored lights, they likely use I2C. I talked to a mentor from 111 at Midwest about how they did their lights, and he informed me that they use I2C from the arduino to control a strip of RGB LEDs. I do not know how 118 does their lights but I would guess they do it in a similar way.

Best of luck, and if you have any questions about arduino, feel free to PM me!