Hi @Shakes999 -
I wrote the pattern “Intro to Pixelblaze Code” to be a gentle walkthrough that’s interactive and lets you play with one example at a time. It took me a really long time to write, and I’d be interested in hearing what clicked or didn’t when you worth through it.
Small correction so you don’t go looking at the wrong learning resources: Pixelblaze uses a subset of JavaScript (which is fairly different than Java).
I wrote up a guide to the subset of free Codecademy javascript courses that apply to Pixelblaze. You can skip entire chapters to fast-track your learning.
If it’s still overwhelming after you’ve dedicated something like 5-10 hours of really focused study to the things above, I think your best options depend on time and money. If you have a lot of time but not money, I’d check out Scratch and the game Lightbot. If you have money and not time, I’d hire a tutor and commit to a minimum number of hours on a regular schedule, like three 30 minutes sessions per week or something, or hire someone to subcontract the software development to.
Above all, set yourself little tiny goals and work at them regularly.
- I’m going to take the existing “blinkfade” pattern and make it red-only
- I’m going to make one white dot bounce back and forth
- I’m going to light up every 5th pixel a different color
If you’ve put in 30 minutes and tried 3 ways, and you paste the not-working code here in the forums, we’ve got an incredible community here: a few people will probably help out just because they honor the effort you’ve put in and want to grow this community and see you pay it forward too. If you instead pop in with, “Hey, how would I code a strobe?” without trying it first, or “How would I make a clock that reacts to music?” (which is too complex for a beginner), my guess is there’s less enthusiasm from the forum.
It’s really rewarding when it clicks and you can make the things in your mind come to life - I hope you stick with it!