After some trial and error, I generated an AnimationTestSprite class, and re-defined all of the char and CRGB structs to load my generated pixel art animation into memory. And told the MotionSensor object to spawn one when it detects motion. (Or when I push the test button.)

And the Arduino Due crashed so hard, I had to force erase its memory.

Welp.

I'll get into what caused it later, but I hunted down the cause and fixed it. So I just watched my first pixel art animation on the live test rig.

Witch Lights Animation Test 1: Timing Test:

The frame rate is much faster than I thought. That's good. It can also be adjusted with an UpdateInterval variable, so that's also good.

I'll go into the cause of the crash at a later date, because it's going to affect my strategy and approach to the whole thing. But for now I'm happy with this progress.

Getting a baseline reaction to the Witch Lights from cats.

This is with the acceleration and scanner animation code from last year.

So far, Samhain really LIKES seeing the lights, but doesn't really "chase" them. She just sort of... purrs while staring at the lights. And then talks to me until I make them come back for her.

Of the three cats, Elwood is the one who goes outside and hunts, and so he's the one whose "chase" instinct I'm hoping to capture.

Gilly doesn't even seem to see the LEDs as motion. She got curious where the flickering was coming from, assured herself that the LED strip was neither catnip nor food, and wandered off.

One of the problems I anticipated facing while on-site with the Witch Lights is the failure of a NeoPixel strip. Because of the architecture of the lights, a bad strip will take out not just its five meter section of LEDs, but also all strips plugged in downstream.

As one diagnostic tool in my on-site kit, I have this Arduino Uno, which is linked up to one of the waterproof 4-pin connectors that the Witch Lights pixel strips have on each end. To use it, you simply plug one end of a NeoPixel strip into it, and plug in the battery.

It runs a color test pattern down the strip, which tells you that the strip works, and also that it doesn't have any bad pixels. So that's what I put it together for.

Right now, though, it's coming out because I'm going to plug it into this new 5-meter pixel strip, which will be used for my workshop test rig.