The BlinkyShoes prototype is up and running. It parses whatever message is set at the top of the code and flashes each LED one of four colors. Explanation of the letter encoding is in this post.

Notes:

• The characters need to be better separated out so that it doesn’t look like the colors are “jumping” from one LED to the other. I’ll add in a quick delay between the letters, and also maybe a little fade in / fade out to fix that.
• It’s more difficult to tell apart the green and blue on the video than it is IRL, so I’m going to switch them to more distinct colors in the final product.

Since I only coded the letters I’d need to spell the test message “blinkyshoes1” (creative), I want to finish fleshing it out before post it. While I drew from the various Morse Code examples I found online for ideas, this is really a whole different animal than the single-LED-flashing-on-and-off examples. It’s not rocket science, but I still tried to utilize arrays and loops as often as possible so as not to have endless hard coded junk. Once the code is up I’d be happy to hear if anyone has suggestions for more ways to condense it / make it more flexible.

Final note - Coding in Wiring is magnificently easy. I haven’t had to beat my head against a wall screaming, “Why won’t you work, damn you? WHYYYY???” even once. <knocks on wood>