2026-04-05 –, Solder Enrichment Center
Everyone can easily learn to program LED strips to make you life trippy and beautiful.
For total beginners -- no knowledge needed at all.
LED strips are really inexpensive, and hackers have created many easy methods for controlling them to make way cool patterns and colors. In this workshop you will learn an easy way to control LED strips and make them do what you want. We will take advantage of a very inexpensive Arduino clone to do our work. I'll show you everything you need to know to use existing programs -- as-is, or to hack on -- to control the colors in your world with LED strips.
This workshop is for total beginners.
For ages 10 - 100
Workshop Itinerary:
Intro to Red-Green-Blue (RGB) LEDs and color theory
Very brief intro to Arduino
How to use an Arduino to control an LED strip
Some demos of programs you can download
* How to order LED strips
Materials costs
The workshop is free, but if you would like to partake in the hands-on aspects of the workshop, Mitch will have workshop materials available for 20 €.
Optional: Bring your laptop if you want to go home with the free Arduino software installed on it.
Arduino software runs on Windows, MacOS and Linux.
Links:
LEDS Strips Everywhere for Everyone! workshop webpage
Ardiuno software download
Mitch Altman is a hacker and inventor, known for inventing TV-B-Gone, a keychain that turns off TVs in public places. He co-founded a successful SilyValley startup and did pioneering work in Virtual Reality. He is an author and teacher, and goes around the world giving talks and workshops. Mitch promotes hackerspaces, open source hardware, and mentors others wherever he goes. He is a co-founder of Noisebridge hackerspace in San Francisco, and is founder of Cornfield Electronics.