Cerebral Frequencies: Interactive LED Light BOX

This Art project will allow you to create an interactive brain model.

Our model will light up and make sounds for specific brain regions.

We'll use concepts from LED animation, audio, capacitive touch and storage expansion.

This build is using a Raspberry Pi Pico W.

Raspberry Pi Pico W:

Micro SD SPI or SDIO Card Breakout Board:

Micro SD card:

Breadboard:

4 x AA Battery Holder (and 4 AA batteries):

20 LEDs NeoPixel Strand:

Portable Mini Speaker:

Power Bank:

Capacitive Touch Break out board:

Alligator Clips:

Alligator Clips to pin:

Cable Pins:

Velcro:

Supplies to actually build:

1/8 in birch wood (Laser Cutting)

1/8 in pink acrylic (Laser Cutting)

Wood Glue (Enclosure)

Hot Glue (Enclosure)

Build you're brain box model and cut out!

You'll need access to a laser cutter, adobe illustrator and a laser cutting software like Trotek Ruby.

1. Download the laser cutting files.
2. Make Any Adjustments Necessary to Ai files:
3. Stroke Weight and Color (This will be based on you're laser cutter specifications; We use (255,0,0) RED and 0.01mm stroke).
4. Go to your preferred laser cutting soft ware and make three cuts!
5. The Enclosure: This will create the box and brain outline.
6. The Speaker Holes: On the material you just cut out, specifically the front side (the one with the brain on it), laser cut the speaker holes onto a corner.
7. The Outline: This will create a pink acrylic outline we will place on top of our enclosure to diffuse the lights and make the art POP!
8. When you have made all your cut outs, glue together the assembly, but do not glue on the acrylic, we'll do that towards the end.

Powering the rail:

1. Connect a pin from the 5v port on the breadboard to the the top of the positive rail, on the right hand side.

Wiring SD Card Reader:

1. Wire the power line to the nearest 5V rail port
2. Wire the Ground to the ground rail or nearest ground port.
3. Wire the SCK port to GP10
4. Wire the SI/MOSI/TX port to GP11
5. Wire the SO/MISO/RX port to GP12
6. Wire the CS port to GP13

Wiring the Speaker:

1. Make sure to charge your speaker to full batter.
2. Use alligator clips (to pin) to:
3. Ground the the base of the auxiliary "out" to a ground port.
4. Clip the the tip of the auxiliary "out" and plug into GP16.

Wiring the Capacitive Touchpad:

1. Use the STEMMA QT 4pin cable that came with the capacitive touchpad to:
2. Ground (BLACK) to a nearby ground port.
3. Plug the SDA cable (BLUE) to GP4.
4. Plug the SCL cable (YELLOW) to GP5.
5. Plug the Power cable (RED) to a 5V rail port.

Wiring the LED Strip:

1. Take out your battery pack and install the batteries, but keep the pack OFF.
2. Strip the black and red wires, if needed, to expose them.
3. Strip the three wired cable of the NeoPixel strand, if needed, to expose them.
4. Alligator clip the ground cable on the NeoPixel strand to the ground cable on the battery pack.
5. Use a Alligator clip to pin out cable, clipping the battery pack ground wire, and plugging the pin out into a ground port on the bread board (This creates a common ground, allowing the strand to communicate with the board, without receiving power from the board).
6. Alligator clip the power cable on the NeoPixel strand to the power cable on the battery pack.
7. Alligator clip to pin out, clipping the signal cable on the NeoPixel strand and plugging into GP18.

Check the simple wiring diagram above for reference.

1. Download provided code.
2. Open PyCharm.
3. Ensure you have all the proper modules installed for the libraries.
4. Use "circup install -a" command in the command prompt to do this.
5. Ensure you have Tio, or a similar program, Installed to see code output.
6. Read through it to ensure you know how it works.
7. Change any of the addressable externals components if needed (SD card reader, Capacitive touch pad, LED Strip, Speaker).
8. If you follow the wiring diagram you won't have to worry about this.
9. Ensure you have a "sd" file on your CIRCUITPY volume for your PicoW.
10. Install the provided sound files and place them in your SD card, in a file called "brain_sounds"
11. Ensure the code runs smoothly!
12. The first eight capacitive touch pads should (1) Light up at least 2 LEDs (2) Play a funky brain wave sound (3) Be calling the sound file from the ""sd/brain_sounds/" pathway.
13. If your code does not work:
14. ENSURE YOUR WIRING IS CORRECT.
15. This is what I had most trouble with. So I tried to make it easy here. (1) You must have common ground for your LED strip an board to communicate (2) your breadboard wiring must match the code.
16. Ensure you have the correct files and pathways being called in the code.
17. Ensure you have all modules required for the libraries to be used in the code.
18. Once your code is functional, we can move onto building the enclosure and Putting the project together.

1. Whip out the Velcro strips and zip ties, it's about to get messy.
2. If you haven't already, glue the box together, except the top portion with the brain design.
3. On the back side of the panel with the brain design, hot glue the fist LED light to the frontal area and continue in a zig zag fashion (see image above).
4. On the front side of the panel with the brain design, hot glue the bottom, sides, and top areas and quickly place the acrylic outline accurately onto the wood design, add more hot glue to the same edges if needed. (Remember: A little goes a long way.)
5. Velcro down the components: Pick corners where there is space for wires to breath. (See how mine came out above).
6. Velcro down the bread board.
7. Velcro down the battery pack.
8. Velcro down the power source.
9. Velcro down the speaker (under the speaker holes).
10. Pull the Stemma QT capacitive touch pad out of the enclosure and Velcro it down to the top, where you can interact with it later.
11. Plug in the power bank to the Raspberry Pi to power it on.
12. Turn on the battery pack to supply power to the LED.
13. Close the structure and interact with the capacitive touch pads to see how the brain speaks!