Over-engineering an RGB LED strip: let’s make a custom programming language

I did something similar once, where I wrote a Qt application that let you add effects to a timeline, which would get saved as json and could then be run on a Raspberry Pi to control a grid of NeoPixel LEDs. Each effect on the timeline has a start and length, which pixels it affected, RGBW colors, easing function in and out and effect type (fade, blink etc — there were a few basic effect types that could be combined to create more elaborate effects). The Qt application was able to simulate the LEDs in a GUI using the same code that ran on the RPi (just the GUI was replaced with LED driver code there). It was used to play animations on a t-shirt that was covered in a grid of LEDs made for a local musician. It was a fun project. The code is on GitHub but it’s terrible quality due to having been written over the space of 3 days and then never touched again: https://github.com/danielytics/ledstudio