My First Full-Stack Project: LEDs Driven by an FFT

This was my first real project and the one that paved the way for the ATtiny85 handheld¹ four years later.

When I bought my first Raspberry Pi, a Raspberry Pi 1 Model A², I had no idea what I was doing. Trying to drive a 12 V RGB LED strip burnt me both figuratively and literally, but it taught me how to wire MOSFETs and control them with PWM³. The obvious next step was to make the strip do something. I’d seen LEDs react to music and then stumbled across an article on the FFT⁴. The article was thoroughly arcane to me, but it gave me the last building block I needed.

Without quite meaning to, I’d built a full-stack application. I learnt about Ajax⁵ and XMLHttpRequest⁶, became fascinated by CSS, and discovered that programming can feel like real-life magic. I wish more kids had that first experience of programming: one that makes you curious to build things and doesn’t punish you too harshly for making mistakes along the way.