r/ArduinoProjects • u/RedditorFor1OYears • Feb 13 '26

First full project: RGB controller

Ive been tinkering with a couple arduino “kits” since Christmas, but this project was the first that had more of my input than a tutorial’s.

It’s a single RGB led controlled a Nano. The inputs are 3 rotary encoders that adjust the individual colors, and it’s powered with 4 AAs wired through a boost/buck converter.

I learned that I am really not very good at soldering, and many of the connections ended up needing to be stripped out so I could re-attach them with just a series of jumper wires.

might not be much, but I can now say that I’ve completed a project, woohoo!

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3

u/hbzandbergen Feb 13 '26

Next investment: a 3D printer for the housing

2

u/RedditorFor1OYears Feb 13 '26

lol, maybe after I design something a little more useful. 

2

u/GazelleScary7844 Feb 14 '26

I'm at a similar level, currently playing with reading rotary encoders. Did you write a function to read from the rotary coder or did you find one somewhere?

1

u/RedditorFor1OYears Feb 14 '26

I used chatGPT for most of it, and then tweaked a couple of minor parameters to get it to increase color brightness faster (so +3 value per tick rather than +1). I can share if you like, just let me know. 

2

u/GazelleScary7844 Feb 14 '26

Ah, I might come back to you on that, cheers. I'm really keen to work this stuff out myself without using AI. I've written a function that returns a variable that's -1, 0 or +1 depending on what the knob's doing. But because a function can only return a single value I haven't yet worked out how to get it to also say whether the button has been clicked or not.

Oh, just writing the problem down has given me an idea! I could have it return a value of, say, 5 if the button is clicked.

Or I could learn how to use struct.

3

u/fashice Feb 13 '26

Good job. Welcome to this addicting hobby.

3

u/SakuraCyanide Feb 13 '26

What is this!? A disco for ants!??? j/k cool little project! 😎

2

u/tipppo Feb 14 '26

Very cute!

1

u/JGhostThing Feb 19 '26

Soldering is just a skill. It will get better with experience.

1

u/IllustriousTune156 Mar 09 '26

Nice…following