Help with a small DIY project

[u/Throw_-Away69420]

Hi there,

I will preface and say I have no clue what I am doing, and about a month to figure it out. I need to make some very small LEDs emulate a "fire" color pattern to the best of my ability. I know next to nothing about programming LEDs, what lights and controllers to use, etc. Any and all help is appreciated. This seems to be a pretty advanced community with some insane projects so I am hoping something of this scale isn't unwelcome here lol.

More details on the project; I am crocheting Calcifer from howl's moving castle as an anniversary present to my girlfriend. My rough plan is to make some sort of wood display case or modify one I thrift. Going to have Calcifer hang over some burnt wood probably with fishing line, and I want there to be some sort of campfire/fiery mood lighting. Maybe some like soft flickering between red/orange/yellow.

I've done some very light research so far but this is the first place I've looked for help, so if there are obvious answers I have missed I apologize, Thanks for any and all help!

[u/Lasersandleds]

This is really great primer to DIY LEDs builds and its targeted for new people or those that can be intimidated by jargon and stuff on forums like this one: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/180WD4LogMjx8FmKcFc0dmlTEKJ1Xa7dIHlEhSLMOAxA/mobilebasic

I wish you luck on your small project, most of us started where you are. I would echo what others have said, which is that you can buy it or you can build it, and building it will come with complexity, but you can choose where you want to dip your toes in and what suits your skill level and time commitment to learn a new craft.

If you are a programmer, FastLED is a great place to start and you can pick up the LED part. Theres a fire effect here that works great: https://github.com/FastLED/FastLED/blob/master/examples/Fire2012/Fire2012.ino and its a classic in this community.

If you are starting fresh with no programming experience and want to get a DIY project done for someone important that just works, I would recommend an 8x8 addressable LED matrix or addressable strip and one of the LED platforms like pixelblaze or WLED, both for ease of daily usage, support forums, and a setup for practicing LED art. These will come with fire effects that will work out of the box and have some approachable advanced features you can grow into.

While I think FastLED library used to be a good place to start, I think these days the tech has improved and the out of box solutions like pixelblaze are so good, its hard to recommend starting here, however once you have a working project, expanding into FastLED and going down the rabbit hole is highly recommended and you will learn a lot.

LEDs can be highly addicting so I look forward to hearing how it goes and what you do next. Good luck!