This x1000!
Someone also recently recommended the Tiny microprocessors. I’ve enjoyed using those little guys too.
ATTiny?
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Me too, these things are neat!
So the first project added to my list will be figuring out what language is being spoken here. 
Interesting that when I search my local library’s catalog for LED Lighting I get a bunch of hits for Led Zeppelin.
Your library won’t be much help. Even the make magazines are often out of date by the time they are a year old.
There are very good free resources for this stuff. adafruit learning has a ton of great guides. They call those LEDs “neopixels”. Sparkfun also has some great tutorials and some videos. There are always a million tutorial you tube videos on any subject, and there are probably a lot of good instructables as well. The megaleaf is probably pretty well documented too, since it is a big enough project.
Learning how to install fimware on a microcontroller can seem very hard. There are a lot of things that are brand new, all at once, and a seemingly endless supply of options. There really are just a few common ways to do something though, and they are created by very smart people so that the rest of us can understand what is going on and learn what we can. They don’t exactly make it possible for “everyone” to use them, but they are getting closer. It is harder, in many ways, to understand a natural system, like astronomy. These systems have physical limits, but they are designed by humans to be used by humans. If you remember that, you’ll be able to make a few guesses and you’ll often be right.
Boy, does it leave you with a lot of power. You can do things like make a temperature sensor with a little screen that sits on your desk. You can also make it host a web page so you can check the temperature on your desk from somewhere else. You could then make the megaleaf in your living room have a color that represents that color (if you wanted). Or about a billion other things. There’s a lot to learn to make a system like that, but it is possible, and you don’t have to be a super hero to do it.
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LEDs are easy. Where people screw up is in the load calculation for how much power they really need to run a set number of LEDs. The lower the Voltage the higher the Amperage needed to run a string of LEDs. A lot of people try to throw a ton of 5v Neopixels on a USB phone charger and call it good. Quick way to melt the charger and start a fire.
Incidentally, I re-milled my Makita router plate for my LR2 to include two small slots with protective diffusion covers. These slots will contain 3 WS2812 LEDs per side (it’s what I have on hand right now) and will light up the bit and milling surface under the dust shoe in order to view the bit via the camera I will be mounting. Fun times!
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THIS! This is exactly it! The power you gain over the ideas swimming around in your head is amazing. It’s the same with the CNC world. All of a sudden, the creativity you may struggle with because you don’t have the means to make the vision in your head come true in a way that works for you becomes possible because you use a different method to make it happen. 3D printing led to me learning Fusion enough to be bad at it, but able to make things happen. This led to the CNC. This led to my light that I have wanted to build since the Nanoleaf was released. And I could have tried to make it by hand with other power tools, but the CNC made it a two hour design session and an 8 hour cut. And BAM! LIGHT!
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Thanks for this! Even if I never make something of my own design I’d like to learn a bit more of how all this comes together to do useful things. This thread and the robot thread have fascinated me even though my understanding is very much at a low percentage. But, as you say, there is much available for the asking these days. I watched my Dad waste away with Alzheimer’s, it’s not proven fact but many have the opinion learning new things may be somewhat preventative, and if it’s also interesting it’s WIN WIN in my book. 
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I’m sorry to hear of your father’s struggle. I firmly believe we are meant to be better. Every day, be better. Learning constantly, and learning how to learn, helps develop and strengthen the neural pathways… I read a study not too long back that linked what you said about learning new things may help prevent degeneration because while the brain loses its plasticity, if you establish the patterns now, they’re generally etched too deep to be erased by the ravages of neural diseases. I’ll see if I can find it again. Several doctors in our circle of friends have had these discussions with us as there is concern my MIL may be in early stages.
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I couldn’t agree more! I’ve been wondering if the fascination watching a machine in action, especially one you put together yourself, ever grows old? I think I’ll take NO for $200 Alex. 
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I have to think one of the best things he ever did for me was subscribe to Popular Science from the time I was learning to read, and while I still feel gypped that I have yet to have a jet powered helicopter in my garage as they led me to believe I would, it lit the curiosity lamp that still burns.
My best wishes with your MIL, it’s a very unkind disease. One of the things that helped pull me through was that even though he was no longer ‘here’ even while he was with us, was that he could be off somewhere having a blast, he just couldn’t tell us about it.
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The power that comes with making a machine like this is addicting. Really, that’s my hobby now. I try to make sure I make a few things with each new machine, but I am always looking for a way to get the high of making a new machine that can make me even more capable. I also like to learn. Enough that I will often try a different programming language to do a new component in rather than use what I know. I know enough well enough that I don’t really need to know more, but they each have their own way of solving problems, and their own niche where they strive. It’s awesome.
I seriously think I could be happy just living in a cabin in the woods with high speed internet, doing programming puzzles each day and drinking coffee and watching the snow fall. It’s nice to have a shop too, but the fact that software requires no new materials and can reach people across the world with little to no cost is amazing. It can be exhausting, but it feels great when it works.
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I think it’s trying to improve things that’s addictive. A friend had an engine dyno in his shop with very good instrumentation. We found 8HP in a big block chevy simply through valve adjustment, i.e. for free. In a stock class where parts and mods are restricted, that’s very satisfying.
And if nothing else, all this fun stuff to fool with keeps me from thinking I actually can play golf. 
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Only tangentially related, but I just learned that I can develop, compile, and debug Linux programs from Visual Studio in Windows. It will ship the code over to the target, execute make, start gdb and connect to it without me having to know anything about gdb or have any IDE (or vim @jeffeb3) on the Linux side. This is a total game changer. The edit+debug cycle on Linux had been enough of a barrier to prevent me from considering anything other than tiny (approx 1 page) programs, but now anything is possible. Like OpenCV on Raspberry Pi (and not inside Python). I have a Jetson TX1 around here somewhere that is still in its original box. Maybe now I can finally build that Nerf gun robot with facial recognition.
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You probably need to cross compile for arm if you’re using the pi. Or compile on the pi.
Developing for Linux is really easy in Linux 
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I have no doubt developing for Linux is really easy once you’ve established habits, familiarity, and muscle memory. There is no way that Linux veterans would tolerate anything less.
Visual Studio compiles on the Pi (or any Linux target) automatically. So I can get a nearly native experience with almost none of that Linux tool familiarity. I can even keep Tortoise Git.
It appears to be true, Microsoft really does 
Linux.
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Yeah. They definitely didn’t 
Linux a decade ago, but it does seem to be pretty y recently. I think it’s smart. If they can make the Linux benefits their benefits, without forcing people to learn the idioms of Linux, they will gain share.
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Having been an avid Linux advocate and seeing the bitterness of those battles… I still cringe just mentioning the M*%! name. But it sure makes this ring true…
First, they ignore you…
Then, they laugh at you…
Then, they fight you…
Then, you win.
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Given their history (I’m looking at C#, T-SQL, and a few others), I expected the “Embrace and Extend” touch of doom to hit Linux as well, but it seems there are just too many rabid zealots out there (maybe even in Redmond) to allow that to happen. I’m actually quite happy about that turn of events. 
Certainly a “better turn” than could have ever been hoped for, with Ballmer and Gates at the helm. Once they stepped out of the picture, I suspect it was the clearer-headed, “closet” Linux-lovers in their midst that realized Linux was intrinsically good and a “gift” to genuinely embrace, without the need to kill, or extend, it. A win-win for everybody.
I think the mobile phone and browser wars also had a huge impact. Getting beat a couple of times makes you need to change your image. They are no longer the 95% market share. They are 1/3rd in a lot of places where it matters.
I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some market research that suggested that young developers were preferring linux (and mac) at scary numbers (for them). Things like WS4L seem to target developers directly. So do the IoT windows images. This has to be a significant battlefield for them, because developers drive programs, which drive OS sales (it is the main reason they were beating Mac OS in the 90s).
Things like hardware compatability and available programs and games are getting much better in Linux. The fact that chrome and firefox run so well in Linux means that many new programs work flawlessly (the mobile ones, which are many onshape, google docs). The fact that steam supports Linux means a lot of developers have a fast solution to Linux game development.
Still, the hardest thing about moving from Windows to Linux is the interface. People have been using windows 10 for a very long time. Pretty much every linux computer looks and acts differently. Occasionally, you have to type in a command line. Partially because that’s the only reliable way, and partially because that’s what the people helping you know how to use. Ubuntu is doing hard work to fix that, but they are shooting themselves in the foot by changing everything every two years.
/ramble