Arduino and Pi tinkerer here

Hi Group!  I am surely not as advanced as many of you, but I enjoy fooling around with Arduino's and Pi's, along with various other electronics.  Also a ham radio op (W1IP). I am in the US in Connecticut.

Recent Arduino projects:

- Made an acrylic light pole on a stand filled with RGB leds that danced to music with an audio sensor powering an Arduino. Can't take credit for the programming, just the construction. 

- Took an old bike wheel, drilled holes between in each spoke, inserted RGB lights and remounted the tire (that was a b*tch), then a small wire to a project box with an Arduino and a potentiometer  to adjust brightness. This was for my son, the bike nut. Did  a sequence of patterns. Hang on wall, cool!

- Running Lego trains. I co-run a big holiday train show, and one of members had a very large classic Lego train layout on display. However, they run on batteries,  and during a 6 hour day, would not make it.  So, seeing as they are controlled by an IR remote, I figured I could control it with an arduino.  However, after reading the LEGO API, I was lost. Libraries to the rescue! Someone had already written a library! So we were able to mount a high power IR LED above the layout, and basically the Arduino did a timed run on and off. We positioned the LED near the "station", so the train would actually stop in the right place when it was time to rest. Very fun project. We even had a little Lego man holding the LED like it was a train lantern. No one could tell. Tripled the battery life by running 30 sec on and a min or so off.

Sorry for the length!  

Paul