It’s been a good while since I’ve come back to this blog. It’s something I always think I should do, but I just never get around to doing it. I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I will come back here in ten years and look to this blog in nostalgia. So, I figure it’s good to document what this point in my life was like. Why that has to be on a public blog on the Internet, I cannot explain.

A week back, my undergrad college (NITC) education came to an end. Though I spent around a half of it sitting at my desk at home staring at a screen, I’m still leaving the place with a bunch of fond memories, some great experiences and an itch to talk about all of it. Luckily, I have this blog which has patiently been waiting for me to come scream into the void again.

We decided to put up some lights around the house for this year’s Christmas. As is my curse, I decided to whip up some fancy rainbow animations using a bunch of WS2811 LEDs and a NodeMCU that I had lying around. (see: LeapRGB)

What’s unique about these LEDs is that each one contains an IC; as such, it allows you to individually control each LED in the strip. A typical LED strip might have a power and a ground line and have the entire strip light up uniformly. Here, we have a power, ground and a data line that can be fed using a microcontroller.