This project aims to make an LED art installation of the Vasily Kadinsky "einige kreise" picture - see pictures below. The installation will be driven by 2 Arduino Mega 2560's ( one for the LEDs, one for a remote control ); each colored circle can change color independently.

Here's the final installation - you fine some pictures if you scroll down, or look here

• every plywood sheet should have had a SINGLE connector to connect to the MAIN sheet with the microcontrollers. Currently I have one centralized place where all connects - so taking the whole piece apart is a big mess as i have to disconnect 36 connectors and loose all the pin-layout. Not good. Next time, one central connector per Plywood sheet, with a single cable running to the microcontroller. Not 1000's of cables. it's also easer to build as you can measure the length of the cables better.
• do the edges in an angled fashion so it looks more like "floating" / cut the sides in angles where the top plywood is smaller than the one below, than the one below, than the one below...

Here are some good reads on colors and color theory:

The color wheel Hue angle transitions

I created a nice color transition in JSfiddle.

• thin pywood sheets ( 5mm think so it's not too heavy ( home depot, cut the 8x4 sheets into 4 x 4 squares )
• 2 x Arduino Mega 2560
• LED strips WS2812B 5V
• Power supply : I ordered a fan-less Mean Well HSN 300 watts 5V supply. (That's 60 Amps - I went a little over the top as i did not now at the start how many LEDs I have to power. I used 700 LEDS which need 42 Amps max. Power supply
• JST connectors and 3-cables from Amazon
• Soldering iron
• Solder - Mandala Crafts 60 40 0.6mm 0.8mm 1mm 1.5mm 2% Flux Rosin Core Solder Wire (50g, 60 40, 0.8mm) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XX27KZ1/

I'm using the FastLED library to drive my WS2812B 5V LED strips which have individually addressable LEDs. I bought them online.

• Arduino FastLED library
• Infrared library ( currently used: : IRemote. I like to switch to the IRlib2 later. It has conflicts with the interrupts used by FastLED, so I decided to use 2 Arduinos: one to deal with the remote and the LCD display, and one which drives the LEDs.
• Easytransfer_I2C - to communicate between 2 Arduinos via Serial interface

After realizing that there are some timing problems when using the FastLed library together with an IR-remote (the FastLed library turns all interrrupts off), I decided to use 2 Arduino boards for the project:

1. 1 x Arduino MEGA to drive the User interface ( the MASTER)

• LCD display with keypad
• Menu structure on LCD
• IR receiver to remote control the same menu with an IR remote
• uses EasyTransfer library to send data via I2C to the Arduino Mega

2. 1 x Arduino MEGA which controls the FastLED patterns and strands (the SLAVE)

• uses FastLED library to drive the strands
• EasyTransfer library to receive data via I2C from the Arduino Uno menu / UI and translate them into visible patterns
• code for patterns, transitions, and FastLED configuration
• I'm driving 700 LEDS distributed over 36 strands. Each strand has a differnt number of LEDs; this was a bit of a challenge as the 'usual' way of using a two-dimensional array for all LEDS eats up too much memory. I had to modfify the FastLED library to add some methods which allow me to work with a different data structure.

• switch to differnt IR library ( see example

File UNO_LCD_I2C_TX_example.ino contains a fully working example for the Arduino Uno which

• shows a menu for 2 LED strands + some global configuration
• interfaces with an IR remote to use the menu
• interfaces with a keypad on the menu to choose functions
• sends the data to the Arduno Mega via I2C communication

This example uses the following libraries:

• Wire.h
• EasyTransferI2C.h
• LiquidCrystal.h
• MenuEntry.h"
• MenuLCD.h"
• MenuManager.h"
• IRremote.h
• IRremoteInt.h

• allow to control brightness of strands individuall ( could be combined with the on/off possibility )

• allow to switch individual strands on/off

• Create solid patterns: red, green, blue Create solid transitions of full strand : red -> green -> blue -> ...

• add new transitons ( turning / rgb color circles )

• add beserker mode ( blinking in high frequency with different colors )

• store favorite configs and add possibility to cycle trough them. [ 0, 2, 1, 0 ] ... strips don't need to be all the same theme

• adjust speed of some patterns ?

• reset function [ go back to start config ]
• add possibility to cycle all strands trough all patterns together
• switch all strands on / off
• control brightness of all strands with single button
• change the strand themes individually per strand

More pictures can be found here