FastLED Recipes

Difficulty Level: ⭐ to ⭐⭐ Beginner to Intermediate Time to Complete: 1-2 hours (to explore all four recipe documents) Prerequisites:

Getting Started - Basic LED control and FastLED setup
Core Concepts - Understanding color theory, arrays, and timing
Basic Patterns - Foundation pattern programming
Recommended: Intermediate Techniques - For deeper understanding of techniques used in recipes

You'll Learn:

How to use ready-to-use, copy-paste LED effect recipes
Fire simulation techniques using heat arrays and color palettes
Twinkle/sparkle effects with random LED selection
Breathing/pulsing animations with smooth fading
Various wave patterns including sine waves and color waves

This directory contains practical, ready-to-use recipes for common LED effects. Each recipe is self-contained with complete code examples and explanations.

Available Recipes

Fire Effect - Realistic fire simulation using heat arrays and color palettes
Twinkle/Sparkle - Random twinkling stars and sparkle effects
Breathing Effect - Smooth pulsing/breathing animations
Wave Patterns - Various wave effects including sine waves, color waves, and ocean-inspired patterns

Using These Recipes

Each recipe is designed to be copied directly into your Arduino sketch. They assume you have:

cpp

#include <FastLED.h>

#define NUM_LEDS 60
CRGB leds[NUM_LEDS];

void setup() {
    FastLED.addLeds<WS2812B, DATA_PIN, GRB>(leds, NUM_LEDS);
    FastLED.setBrightness(50);
}

Then simply copy the effect function into your code and call it from your loop() function.

Customization Tips

Adjust timing by changing the delay() values or beat rates
Modify colors by changing the CRGB or CHSV values
Scale effects to your LED count by adjusting loop ranges
Combine multiple effects for unique patterns

Contributing

Have a great recipe to share? Contributions are welcome! Make sure your recipe:

Is self-contained and well-documented
Includes parameter explanations
Follows existing code style
Has been tested on actual hardware