If you're interested this is the project that is the first time I used Arduino (in the interests of full disclosure I have had some experience of web-development style programming back in the day so was slightly au-fait with generalised programming syntax/methods but it genuinely isn't that complicated, it's essentially all 1's and 0's)
The project I did using Arduinos grew over time. Initially it was going to be a controller for a "periscope" installed in a new build that was going to control a rooftop camera with left and right buttons on the periscope. So far so simple. Then I had a meeting with the client and we got all excited and came up with a couple of features to add:
The periscope eyepiece needs to move up and down.
It needs some lighting.
So the periscope was redesigned so the eye-piece could move up and down, and I chucked in some electric motors to give a "power-assist" lift and automatic down when the handles are released. And I stuck a ring of LED's round the main body of the periscope and a vertical strip of LED's up the side. All controlled by the Arduino. Then the client and I decided to jazz it up a bit...
So when the handles are released the motors lowers the periscope fully and when the periscope is fully down the LED's glow "dim white". When the handles are lifted the arduino reverses the motors and gives a "power assist" lift to the periscope eyepiece and the LED's change from dim white to Blue.
Then I thought it needed a bit more Funk...
So I put an ultra-sonic distance module inside the body of the periscope that could work out the height of the eyepiece by measuring how far away the counterweight was (there had to be a counterweight as the whole eyepiece assembly was about 60kg) and then mapped that height onto the vertical LED's so a section of the vertical LED's would be blue representing the height of the eyepiece and the rest would be dim white. As the eyepiece moves up and down the blue section also proportionally moves up and down. And I added a theatre chase tot he horizontal ring of LED's, so when the move camera left button was pressed on the handle the LED's would "chase" leftwards and when the move camera right button was pressed the LED's would chase "rightwards". I thought this was the end...
Then the client wanted some outside signage with lighting...
But they wanted the lighting to be colour controllable...
Oh and they wanted the lighting on either side of a glass atrium, which at this stage of the build meant there was no physical way of connecting the wiring of the two sets of lights...
And they wanted a central control panel...
Which could also not have any direct physical wiring connection with either set of lights...
So I built an arduino based wireless lighting slave box for each of the sets of lights and a wireless master control box (with colour touch screen, schwing) to control the colour/pattern/etc of the lights...
And then the client said "could we adjust the colour of the periscope LED's from here as well?"
And (after a bit of head scratching) yes, yes they can.
This is the periscope: