Neopixel Playground
The idea of the Neopixel Playground was to make a board that lets you do more stuff with our darling WS2812 LEDs, more conveniently. V1 is a very sparse prototype with many obvious omissions, but it's a good start. What makes it a playground, you ask? Take a look:
Playground?
It's a playground because you can play with it, of course! There is an Arduino-compatible MCU on the back, and a little perf-board segment on the bottom with no connections, where sensors etc may be soldered (don't mind the big grid of pin headers, you can see the actual image below where they are actually realized as a mini perf board). The only things built in are some decoupling caps, the MCU, and the RTC with 20ppm crystal (can't hurt to have accurate timekeeping). Some things that might be soldered onto it include light sensors, microphones, encoders, buttons (yes, I should have definitely included some buttons..). All MCU pins are available to the bottom right of the RTC, so that circuit elements added in the perf board part may easily be added to the MCUs list of duties.
It works nicely and I am thinking of things to add for a V2. (buttons, micro USB, light sensor, to name a few). I will also probably opt for a proper matrix of LEDs rather than the pseudo-7-segment arrangement I have here.
Full Schematic
